Motorcycle Styling Trends

After I designed the new BMW 6 cylinder touring bike, and saw it was good, I decided to launch into the topic of motorcycle styling trends. I will also resist the temptation to turn this into a rant.

Forty years ago, the stylists' job at a motorcycle company was limited. Most of the motorcycle's shape was dictated by engineering requirements, or by law (for example the shape of the headlight). Most of the bike was made from metal, with manufacturing constraints on the shape of such things as fenders, wheels, and gas tanks. Even seats were limited as to the shape and colour. Also motorcyclists were a tradition-bound group, rejecting any attempts at radical styling touches such as the Vincent "Black Prince". Mostly the stylists were limited to choosing the colour and pattern of the paint on the gas tank, and giving advice to the engineers about how to not create a motorcycle that looked like it was cobbled together from a parts bin.

Although many motorcyclists have not really changed their tastes, there are new riders that do not cling to tradition, for example Mary Ann, who seems to not be at all put off by the non-traditional shape of the Burgman 400. Those who do cling to tradition are more likely to buy something like a Harley Davidson, and not one of the newfangled V-Rods either, just the old fashioned ones.

Over the years, manufacturing processes have changed, and radical new styling possibilities have opened up. One such technology is Computer Aided Design, which permits complex shapes to be designed quickly that previously might have required a whole team of stylists working for years to develop. Modern plastics can be molded to any shape, almost any finish (e.g. like chrome), can resist high temperatures, and high stress. They can be used for anything from engine covers to luggage racks. Plastics are commonly used for fairings, and fenders, where metal used to be the rule.

Modern motorcycles also now use a variety of frame designs that were not possible forty years ago. So large section aluminum frames have become incorporated into the styles of many bikes. The aluminum frames can be more easily styled than the old steel tube frames, whose shapes were strictly a matter of engineering.

Even the wheels, which are now often made of alloys rather than the old laced up spokes, can be styling exercises.

Laws have changed, too, permitting different headlight shapes, which in turn open up more possibilities with the surrounding fairings. The headlamps themselves have been developed in a wide variety of shapes, the most common, I think being the "evil gremlin eyes" from the movie "Gremlins".

It seems like today, the stylists have free rein to turn almost any dream (or nightmare) into reality. But they are always wary of the fickle customers. Stylists always tread a fine line between being "original" and being "wacko". The Harley Davidson company has become profitable in part by catering to the traditionalists. Although they have made attempts at pushing the boundaries of traditional design, they have also occasionally crossed the line and been punished for it. But the result is that Harley today has the best knowledge of any manufacturer about where that line is drawn. Many other companies try to follow their example.

If you were to look closely at my Vulcan 900, you could see that Kawasaki is "styling" a modern motorcycle to look traditional. Even the engine, perhaps especially the engine, has nothing on it that is dictated by engineering. Almost every visible part of what you think is the engine, is a styling trick to make a modern engine look like an old fashioned one. The side covers, air intake box, and cylinder head covers are all plastic covers, looking like chromed metal, that have no function other than decoration. You can take the the engine plastic covers off if you like, but it's going to be ugly. The engine cooling fins are actually metal, but since the engine is water cooled, the fins are only there for the traditional look. The radiator, probably the only concession to reality, is somewhat hidden, and I'm sure the stylists would like to make it disappear altogether. But it's easier to cover something than it is to make it invisible. The exhaust pipes are totally covered by metal heat shields that actually look like exhaust pipes, only much bigger.

There is one fashion trend that all stylists have to accommodate, and that is the fad of wide rear tires. Today, the rear tires of most bikes are wider than optimum, and getting wider every year. Some are getting so wide that they begin to compromise safety, especially on custom bikes. But the customers ask for wider tires, so we'll have to see how far that goes before the pendulum of taste swings back.

Picture: Can you spot the one that is different? The BMW, because it has asymmetric headlights. Also shown, a Suzuki V-Strom, a Honda ST1300, and a Gremlin.

BMW Announces a Six Cylinder Touring BIke

It is typical of all those who tempt fate. No sooner have I written the ultimate ode to keeping the old bike, than BMW promises to deliver the bike that I must own one day.

From a BMW press release:

"The new BMW straight-six will further expand the K-Series in the foreseeable future. The first model to be introduced will be an innovative and luxurious BMW touring machine."

Assuming this bike arrives priced to keep the riff raff away, as BMW prefers, I will probably start buying my lottery tickets now.

It sounds like a cross between my old K1100LT, which is the bike I owned the longest and drove furthest, and my 6 cylinder Honda CBX, which is the bike I traded in to be able to afford the BMW. As I recall, I got $2500 for the CBX in 1992, and today they are worth approximately twice that much.

Soon we will have a BMW touring bike that has an inline six like the Honda CBX.

Before BMW gets too far along in their plans, I want to give them a little advice. Don't make it look too ugly, I have some tolerance of course, but I also have my limits. The K1300GT looks OK so don't stray too far from that. Next, keep it under 700 lbs. I know that's going to be difficult with a 6 cylinder bike loaded with every imaginable piece of nonsense. Then let's not forget some of the basics. An electrical windshield, handlebars that adjust up and down (again like the K1300GT), and weather protection. I guess ABS brakes are unavoidable, but do we also need power brakes? And I would like adjustable stiffness in the rear suspension, while driving if possible. And a full tank of gas has got to go at least 300 km. Finally, I'm not sure if any amount of desire is going to get me over $30,000, so maybe get rid of some the stupider accessories such as a radio/8 track player. But keep the saddlebags (of course you will, you did say it would be a touring bike, right?).

And whatever else you do, I will not buy any bike that I am afraid to drive down a dirt track to a campsite.

Picture: Just to keep the BMW designers from messing things up too much, this is what the bike needs to look like. You may use this design without charge, but I would appreciate being credited in your publicity. I photoshopped this design by combining the front wheel and engine of the Concept 6 with a K1200GT. I will leave BMW designers the details to work out for themselves.

Slowing the Revolving Garage Door

I came across a blog yesterday that caught my eye for two reasons. It was called "Forty Years on Two Wheels", and as of January 1, I have also been motorcycling for forty years. And secondly, the writer just bought a Kawasaki Vulcan 900 exactly like mine, even the colour. But before I could congratulate him on his excellent taste, I realized that after five years he was ending the motorcycling blog.

I was worried that it was the Vulcan 900 that had actually killed his desire to ride a motorcycle, but not really. He was riding less, however, and did not really seem enthused any more after five years of writing almost daily, which is quite understandable. And he did say he would continue riding, though not blogging about it.

But there is still the issue of putting the excitement back in motorcycling. After buying the Vulcan in October, he wrote a blog named "The Revolving Garage Door". Like many other people, he claims to have a short attention span, and keeps a bike for only six months or so before wanting something different.

Occasionally getting bored is something almost any older rider can relate to. Although it may seem like my advice is directed only at this blogger, he probably has figured it out himself already. This advice is for the rest of you. Absolutely everybody either has this situation now or will have it. And I'm not even saying you need to figure it out, because it is natural for people to change their interests with time. I just happen to know it is easier for me to have fun on a motorcycle than anything else. I have tried other things, and every time I come back to motorcycling, I realize that this is what I like best. Not everybody will be like that. We are all just looking for what feels best for us and it may be something else for you. It is also worth while trying other things from time to time.

The revolving garage door syndrome is one part of the loss of interest in motorcycling. If you have plenty of money, there are lots of bikes out there to entice you for one reason or another. You want the power, coolness, image, or bikes that are specialized for off-road, or race tracks, or long distance touring. Sometimes it's some new feature that you must have, maybe an electric windshield (that got me to buy a bike once) or an electrically adjustable suspension (that could work for me in the future). Some bikes are just sooo cool that you would park one at a motorcycle show just to see how many people would gather around it to gasp in awe.

Much of the excitement about motorcycling has more to do with the bike than the actual motorcycling. But although I can understand that, the reason I stick with one bike for a longer time is out of a sense of economic prudence. Changing bikes frequently is not only expensive, it can be addictive. You can keep it up for a while, but after forty years it begins to wear down the finances, just at a point where you are retiring from work. When when you are finally forced to choose a bike that is practical, rather than exciting, the rush goes away.

How do you slow down the revolving garage door without losing the fun of motorcycling? Maybe I shouldn't be commenting on this, because as a Canadian (rather than Arizonian), every year my interest is automatically boosted by "Spring Fever". Well known to Canadian bikers, who all wish they actually lived in Arizona, Spring Fever is a disease that strikes when the snow goes away. We are so happy to get out on a bike that we don't care what pile of crap we are riding. That realization only sets in by September, and by then were are all gripped with a panic called "the last ride of the season", before we freeze our asses off for another winter. I suppose if I was living in Arizona, I would not have this regular boost, and my interest may drift to other things. I don't know. So for non-Canadians anyway, one answer to the revolving door is "Move to Canada".

Second, even Canadian motorcyclists have to consider the "Food Chain" syndrome. If you are comparing yourself riding a plain old Vulcan 900 (which has now become the smallest Vulcan), to everybody else on bigger, faster, more expensive bikes, that will take away some of the thrill for sure. But there is an easy cure. Do not take the Vulcan to Harley Davidson Show'n Shines, or to sports bike rallies. That is very bad for the ego, as one of three things will happen. First, you are ignored. Second, you are told that at least it's a motorcycle, and you are welcome to attend. Third (and best, actually) some Harley biker will make a negative comment about your bike. Now you can understand why little kids prefer to be yelled at for doing something bad, than being ignored. I would suggest that instead of going to Harley show 'n shines, that you join a scooter or moped club with the Vulcan 900.

It is possible that some of my activities help maintain an interest in motorcycling. For example, I also walk a lot, and ride a bicycle. Compared to each of those, motorcycling is still quite a blast.

I have noticed that anyone who keeps a bike for a long time, has usually done some home made modifications that they often take as much pride in as the entire rest of the bike. True, some of those modifications cost more than the entire rest of the bike, but they don't have to. On the Vulcan the only accessory that I paid a lot for was the Airhawk seat, which was $150. But I did a lot of work removing stuff from the bike, which is cheap, and by reducing weight also boosts speed. Then I added splash guards for my feet which I think cost $12 including the hardware store brackets. I tilted the windshield back, which cost nothing because I used some brackets I have been saving for 30 years. I adjusted the suspension, again free because it is adjustable. I bent the heel shifter out of the way of my boot, again free of charge. My handlebar muffs were pretty expensive: $40 for the muffs, but I had to buy a pair of different mirrors for $22 or the muffs didn't fit right. So far I'm in for less than $300. I still have some planned changes coming. I want new handlebars that are narrower and reach further back. I bought a pair last year that are still hung up in the garage, because the only problem was they were further forward. And wider. And I would like a high-mounted LED brake light. Once I have those taken care of, I would not be too interested in starting again with another bike unless the Vulcan was stolen (not likely) or exploded.

I usually find another key to lack of boredom is maintaining the bike myself. Except for changing tires, any bike I turn over to a professional mechanic, I will begin to lose interest in. If I can force myself to dive in and do it myself, I have started a long term interest. If only in seeing just how long it can last with my tinkering.

Picture: Jack Nicholson in Rebel Rousers. Dress like that and you will never be bored.

Global Warming Without the Hysteria

Global warming seems to be on the retreat, if you were to judge by how many clothes I wear when I go out for a walk. Of course everybody knows by now that there is a controversy. The Global Warming Industry is pitted against the oil industry to win the hearts and minds of the SUV drivers.

Who to believe? It seems to me that you can't just poke your nose outside to get the truth. And can you really trust the news? I'm not talking about Fox news, of course, they are clearly biased. And Tiger Woods, you don't believe them either, just stick with your Buddhist religion no matter what Fox News tells you to do.

There is really no trusted independent source of news any more. Well I might be tempted to say this blog is trusted and independent, but I have an obvious bias toward my own blog, so my journalistic integrity stops me from making that claim. I will leave that to others.

Also, studying the science is impossible for most people who do not have the training to analyse the data. So you end up having to trust competing conclusions.

Some pictures that might be worth looking at, that I believe are free of bias, are pictures of the arctic ocean ice cover changing with time, which many people believe is indicative of the current change in our climate. Some think there is more ice now, or that the ice was receding, and now its advancing. You don't need to trust them, you can look at the pictures of Arctic Sea Ice for yourself. And you don't have to look at the dates that are chose by biased sources to prove their own point. Fill in your own two dates and click on "submit". It is "do it yourself science".

What will this prove to you? Maybe nothing. Maybe it will get you thinking that this is a complicated question. Maybe you don't even care if the ice cap is expanding or shrinking. But at least here is one source that I hope we can all agree is unbiased, and maybe we can get away from charges of lying and deception.

Now my own observations are this, and hopefully these are unbiased in any way (except that as Mary Ann says I always look at the "cup half empty").

• There is a claim being made by many respected scientists, that drilling and burning petroleum is causing high levels of CO2 which is suspected of warming the atmosphere. They may be right or wrong, of course.
• We have only one planet. It would be nice to have another just in case, but we don't.
• It would be very easy for people to waste less gas if they just put their minds to it. Back in the sixties, we used a lot less than now, was that so bad? And I see a lot of people being wasteful in their energy use. Sometimes it's even me.
• We need oil for many vital things, for food production, for fuel, to make plastics, and who knows what else. We may very well invent some new thing in the future that uses even more oil.
  
• I don't know if we are running out, but for sure nobody is putting any back in. To claim that we have another 100 years supply at least is pure conjecture.
• The price of oil can go up very suddenly, while our wealth can also drop very suddenly. Really bad things happen if we can't afford oil any more.

So based on those hopefully correct and unbiased assumptions, I would suggest we start cutting back on oil use. Leave more oil for the future just in case our descendants need it. At the same time, this is playing it safe with our climate. In my opinion, it is the responsible thing to do, when you strip away all the hysteria.

Please leave a comment below if you think there is anything in this post that is biased or incorrect. All comments are treated with respect, as my only interest is the truth. Personally, I would prefer that global warming was either a hoax or benign. And if global warming did turned out to be a hoax, it would certainly increase my admiration and respect for the oil companies, because that's what many of them have been saying all along.

Judge For Yourself if Avatar 3D is Simplistic

Several reviews of Avatar (which Mary Ann and I have now seen twice) compare the characters of Grace Augustine and Norm Spellman to the Peace Corps. Also several people have pointed out that Avatar is an over simplified made up story to promote green and multicultural values.

I was in Sierra Leone, West Africa in 1969-72 with CUSO, a Canadian organization similar to the Peace Corps. Although obviously Avatar was fictitious, it is analogous to some events that took place on Earth. Not a single event but a combination of events taken from different places and times, woven together into one story. I would like to compare Pandora to the diamond war in Sierra Leone, so that you can decide for yourself just how oversimplified (or not) it may be. Starting with the idea that Grace was in an equivalent of the Peace Corps.

Although the Peace Corps was spread around the world, it generally went to what we called "Developing Countries". Most often, these were newly independent European Colonies. By contrast, Pandora does not appear to be newly independent, in fact it appears that the colonization process is just beginning. I think you can tell by the fact that the Na'vi do not use any Earth technology at all. If they had any history of being a colony, they would be using things from Earth, such as clothes, vehicles, houses, roads, weapons, books, televisions, radios, telephones, cooking implements, and food. Of those probably the most critical would be food, as it represents more of an economic a dependency than all the rest.

The Na'vi seem to be completely free from any of these dependencies, and so cannot be easily (or peacefully) be manipulated by the mining company. In this sense, they are like an undiscovered tribe in the Amazon jungle, which is a far cry from many of the African people of Sierra Leone in 1969, who listened to radios, played electric guitars, drove cars, lived in houses, and went to school. Sierra Leone was able to produce most of its own food, so starvation was not a problem. And while they did not have a lot of Western luxuries, they didn't really have local alternatives. Meanwhile, the fictitious Na'vi on Pandora had their own shelters, beds, bows and arrows, and horses and birds for transportation. They also made and wore their own clothing, followed their own religion, and had their own (seemingly informal) system of education. And again, they did not depend on Earth for food.

Another indication that there was no history of colonization, is that Grace Augustine is formally studying the Na'vi and the planet of Pandora as if they were a newly discovered life form and ecosystem.

There was a school set up on Pandora by the mining company to teach English to the Na'vi. I'm not sure if they taught anything else except maybe some games, which I saw the Na'vi kids playing in the school yard. Apparently, Grace was a teacher at the school, which would somewhat like the Peace Corps. She also dressed her Avatar up in a way that looked similar to popular Peace Corps clothing.

I want to state emphatically that neither the Peace Corps nor CUSO was made up of scientists like Dr. Grace Augustine who went to study the native people. CUSO and the Peace Corps did some teaching, and the Peace Corp was also involved in agriculture and building. We didn't even have our own schools, we taught at local schools. If anything our overall goal may have been more to promote international understanding. If we did "study" the local people, it was only in the sense that we learned from our hosts, and they learned from us. It was not a formally organized science project, and we never had to report to anyone what we had learned.

As far as I could see in the movie, the mutual learning that went on with the Na'vi was strained. The Na'vi were keeping the Earth people, including Grace, from learning about their ways, especially the spirit tree. When the US Marine/avatar, Jake Sully was learning about the Na'vi, they cooperated only because a mysterious sign had been given, otherwise they were prepared to kill him. And furthermore, Jake was first only there to learn how to best destroy Pandora. All in all, a very hostile exchange of ideas compared to when I was in Africa, where I had no motive to destroy the Africans, and they had none to destroy me. But then my stay in Sierra Leone probably would not have made a very exciting movie.

Sierra Leone unfortunately had the equivalent of "unobtanium", it was diamonds. While I was there diamonds did not cause much of a problem, but twenty years after I left, the country became devastated by a horrendous war caused by evil outsiders who were after the diamonds, and wanted the local people to move out. These outsiders were not Europeans or Americans, but other Africans. However, they were financed and armed by Europeans who paid well for these diamonds, and provided plane loads of AK47's and whatever else was needed to kill local people.

The nearest comparison to the movie character of Parker Selfridge, the mining executive, would be Pat Robertson, of the Christian Broadcasting Network. He entered into a seven million dollar mining partnership with neighbouring dictator Charles Taylor, an African "Born Again Christian", who in turn sent armed militias into Sierra Leone to terrorize the people. I would say Charles Taylor was the equivalent of evil Colonel Miles Quaritch, and today Charles Taylor is being tried at The Hague for war crimes. By contrast, in Avatar, it was the Earth people themselves who did the dirty work of killing the natives, and from the reactions I heard in the audience, after the show, this would not be acceptable in our modern western society. But the way it was done in Sierra Leone, through proxy militias, was apparently more tolerable. I think this elimination of proxies was the greatest oversimplification of the film, but it was done to let people see more clearly who is really behind the violence. The results are the same, though. Diamonds get mined, people get displaced and terrorized by modern weaponry. The situation in Sierra Leone has been resolved since 2001, partly through knowledge spread by activists, partly through improvements to the diamond marketing system, and partly through the British Commandos (sent by Tony Blair) and UN peacekeepers.

Neither the military, nor any mining companies played any role in the Peace Corps Sierra Leone, as far as I could tell. Although I understand from talking to other people, that there may have been some connection with the military in other places like Central America back in the eighties, which the Americans consider almost like their back yard. But I didn't go there, so I have no first hand knowledge.

The Canadian military has absolutely no connection with CUSO anywhere in the world, and this was true back in 1969, and is still true today. Same for mining or oil companies. And don't think Canada does not have evil companies. Talisman, a Canadian company from Alberta, used to have drilling rights in the Sudan, where airplanes were regularly used to bomb native villages to clear the right of way for Talisman's oil exploration. I saw an interview with a Talisman board member, who was being questioned about this activity, and I remember him saying "They have too many tribes in Africa anyway". Almost sounds like dialogue from the film. So much for one moviegoer I overheard saying "They couldn't be Canadians, they must be Americans"

There were two feature movies made about Sierra Leone's diamond war, both were fictitious, based on true events.

"Blood Diamond" 2006, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a South African mercenary looking for diamonds, and Jennifer Connelly and activist and journalist.

"Lord of War" 2005, starring Nicholas cage as the arms dealer.

I liked both of them, although I wished they could have been shot on location, I do not think they were, for example in Blood Diamond, they were driving on the left, which Sierra Leone abandoned while I was there.

Picture: Jennifer Connelly photographing the atrocities in "Blood Diamond"

Republicans in the Office (Of Counter Terrorism)

An interesting case has just come up in the murky world of intelligence gathering. It once again brings up the topic of how best to get important information, by torture or not by torture?

The pro-torture crowd uses this simple situation to make their case. An atomic bomb is about to go off in 10 minutes in New York. You have the bomber in custody, and he doesn't want to talk. Do you torture him and get the answers you need, or wimp out and let the building blow up (and most of the rest of the city?) A simple situation with a simple answer.

This situation is actually the easy part of the process of intelligence gathering. You have the bad guy in custody. You know he knows something that you need to know. You have a way to verify quickly whether or not his answer is correct. At that point you really would have to fumble the ball badly to not get the information you need, like for example if you threatened him with a loaded gun, it prematurely went off and killed him.  So let's stop using this mythical situation to rationalize torture.

A part of intelligence gathering that has importance in real life, is having ordinary people voluntarily come forward with important information. I know this is too passive to have any appeal to the bulked-up-on-steroids types among us, but in the overall security picture, this part of the intelligence gathering is usually 60 percent of the effort. In this type of operation, you must be seen as the "good guys" by at least some of the local people, and you must have the infrastructure in place to sort through the incoming data. Notice here that passive intelligence is actually somewhat in conflict with torture intelligence.

Now for the most difficult part of the process, the one that breaks down most often, and is the greatest threat to our security. Once the raw data is obtained by one department, how and when does it get passed to another department within the system? That is where the usual office politics and personality conflicts get in the way of people doing their job, day in and day out to the best of their abilities. To learn more about how office bickering can reduce effectiveness, you will need to go to "Dilbert". I know it's a cartoon, but it is a cartoon ironically based on "tips" sent in by people on the ground who deal with this stuff every day in a real office.

The situation I started off with in this blog post is the underwear bomber. Nobody needed to be tortured to save that plane. The very fact that an internationally well liked African-American was president, and had signed a bill renouncing torture, made it possible that the bomber's own father would come forward with the tip that his son was going to try something. All that was necessary to stop him was that the various paper shufflers in government offices should be able to promptly deliver this information to the right inbasket. You would think that since this problem was identified as part of the cause of 9/11, something could have been done about it by now.

But sadly, most of the public discourse is still all about whether or not to torture. If not torture, then even stupider things such as whether to declare war on Yemen. The debate is not about people in the bureaucracy doing their jobs. And what might help is to at least have somebody in charge of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Obama's appointee has been blocked for months now. By petty political bickering, of course. The head of Customs and Border Protection agency also remains vacant, but no one has been chosen yet, so I'm not sure if you can blame that on political bickering. That won't even begin until someone is chosen.

Another issue about these appointees and why so may jobs are unfilled (125 senior political appointments remain open and 96 nominations await Congressional confirmation). Would you want to take a job that apparently the entire country thinks is so irrelevant that the job is empty for up to a year, and yet if any attack ever succeeded, the person holding that job would be the first to be pilloried? Now that is classical office politics.

Picture: My words on the cartoon.

Republicans in the Movies: Commando (1985)

Last night I watched a movie on TV that was not just stupid, but stupid without pause or letup for the entire show. Not that I didn't enjoy it, as it did have a few elements that I like, and there is also the interest after a while in how long can they keep this up, or even top it.

The movie was Commando (1985) with a young looking Arnold Schwarzenegger as hero, and his female sidekick Rae Dawn Chong. The basic plot is Arnold (Johnny Matrix, I believe that is one of the earliest uses of the word Matrix in popular culture) is recruited by bad guys (you don't need to know why or who) to assassinate someone (again, who cares?). They kidnap his daughter to ensure his cooperation. Arnold does not really cooperate, and at one point commandeers a random car driven by Rae Dawn (Cindy) which he proceeds to demolish bit by bit, starting by ripping out the passenger seat with his bare hands so that he has enough room to sit. They take off in pursuit of bad guys, so you have more car chases (that was not the first one, or the last) and as Arnold says "Then all hell breaks loose" and he ends up killing over a hundred people. I lost count, partly because it was not clear, for example if the guy whose arm he cut off actually died once the camera moved on to the next person to be killed.

Rae Dawn is at first apprehensive of this crazy guy who grabs her from behind in her car in a parking garage, and tells her to drive somewhere, and he's not going to hurt her, and to trust him, but he can't tell her why. But then as the mayhem unfolds and more and more people end up dead including an entire regiment of mall cops, her attitude softens, and she starts to help him out by learning how to fire a rocket launcher, steal another car, rescue Arnold from police custody by shooting the rocket launcher at the van taking Arnold away, and then piloting an airplane she has never seen before (she is also a pilot).

The high point of the movie came for me with Arnold and Rae Dawn in the float plane. Rae Dawn is the pilot, as Arnold does not know how to fly a plane. As they struggle to take off under a hail of bullets (the only way to fly), Arnold sees a large boat ahead of them and says says "watch out for the boat" Rae Dawn "EEEEK We're not going to make it". Arnold say "Yes we will!". I did not have time to think: does he know the lift properties of this plane, the weight of himself plus all the weapons he's carrying, the fuel load, the height of the ship, the wind speed and direction? No he didn't know or care about any of those things, he just reached over and pushed the throttle all the way to the max.

How stupid is it for Rae Dawn, supposedly a trained pilot in this film, who is trying to take off and get over some obstacle, to not have the throttle pushed all the way to full power?

But this certainly is a central Arnold idea, not only Arnold but all his fans. It does not matter if you are not a trained pilot, the most important thing is "common sense". Arnold may not have the intellectual book learning, but he has the common sense to know the most important thing is to push the throttle all the way.

The same theme crops up again and again. For instance when Rae Dawn picks up a rocket launcher and aims it at the police van, she has it backwards and takes out a building behind her on the first shot then for the second shot she turns it around and wipes out the van, miraculously not killing Arnold who is sitting in the back, right where the rocket hits. He asks her "How did you learn that". She answers simply "I read the instructions". So the "book learning" that does not say which direction to point the rocket launcher, and it probably should also have said "Caution: if you point it at the back of a van and fire you may kill everybody inside"

Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger's political career. He decides the Governor of California does not know anything about running a state, so Arnold takes over, with the idea that his common sense will prevail, just like in the movies. And surprisingly, a lot of people agreed. I guess he has not done too badly, but California is closer to being bankrupt now than it was when the girly men were in charge. That's the difference between being macho but ignorant in reality and in the movies.

I have a brother-in-law who is an airline pilot. Some years ago, on a family outing I was in the car driven by a non-pilot brother in law, with the pilot driving the car behind. As we took off at moderate speed, the car behind fell further and further back. Both of us were wondering how he could ever fly a plane if he was so reluctant to mash the accelerator pedal in an SUV. So I asked him when we stopped "Is there ever any situation when taking off with a plane where you do not use full throttle?" He answered, yes, lots of times. OKayyy, so that would be what I call "counter intuitive".

The entire movie is on Youtube. Beginning of part 4, Arnold grabs Rae Dawn from behind. "Don't move, get in the cah!" Rae Dawn "You said don't move!" Arnold "Do it!"

Part 6 (at 8:47) Rocket launcher girl

Part 7 (at 2:00) Full throttle "This is not a plane, it's a canoe with wings"


Part one starts here: