Score:5, Offtopic

One month until I'm 18, and I'm no longer my mom's property...

One month until I'm 18, and I can finally get a driver's license.

OK, for a while now, my ThinkPad X21 has been dying. It was a great laptop, but was abused, and had reached the end of its road. The screen was useless, the thing overheated some, the case was cracked, the battery didn't hold much charge, and it was SLOW. 384MB of PC100 RAM will do that to you, though.

Yesterday, after UPS and customs kept delaying my new laptop, it finally came!

This one's a ThinkPad R51e, model 1843-35U. The first thing I did to it was upgrade the RAM, FWIW. Not even turn it on. Specs are:

• CPU: Celeron M 360J, 1.4GHz, 1MB L2 cache
  
• RAM: 768MB PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRAM
  
• HDD: 40GB 5400RPM PATA
  
• Optical: UltraBay Enhanced CD-RW/DVD combo
  
• LCD: 14.1" XGA TFT
  
• Chipset: ATI Mobility Radeon 200M, Intel edition
  
• GPU: Integrated MR 200M
  
• WiFi: ThinkPad (read: Atheros) B/G
  

Anyway, it's pretty nice. Framerates in games, are, shall I say "greatly improved"?

As for the phone... my new phone is a Sanyo SCP-8300. My previous phone, a Nokia 6225, decided that it wasn't going to make or recieve calls, but it was still attaching to the network. So, time to get a new phone.

This new one has a few nice features. First, MIDP 2.0 support. Did I mention that the hifi version of Opera Mini is NICE?

Second, a flash. So, I can take almost usable pics at night.

Finally, a camcorder. Not that I have that option on my plan...

The only problem is, it puts a lot more JPEG artifacts in the picture, so quality is reduced. (FWIW, that laptop pic was taken with that phone.)

Well, I've rejoined civilization. My laptop has a power adaptor now, something it hasn't seen since Friday. (And a WiFi card, even )

Yeah, I left it behind.

Oh, well, at least I've got a shitty laptop with a fscked screen, so I have less incentive to use it

Ah, Christmas, that time of year at which we buy lots of crap at stores, rack up tons of debt, and then give it all away. And, if we don't, we get guilt-tripped into doing it anyway.

Why do we do this madness? Why do we celebrate this "holiday"? And, what's the TRUE meaning of Christmas (those of you who think I'm going to go into a spiel about how "good Christians" don't buy crap on Christmas, think again - I'm not a Christian)?

According to Christian belief, the Christmas holiday, December 25th is the birthday of Christ, and we are to celebrate his birth, and how our world was bettered by him, and all that yada yada. Now, the Christians obviously (and rightly, in my opinion, but this entry isn't about that) say that it's NOT about giving each other presents.

Therefore, why do us non-Christians celebrate it? Seeing as Christmas is a RELIGIOUS holiday, why do we celebrate it?

Well, let's take a look at Wikipedia's article on Christmas.

Here's the section on the origin of the celebration:

Originally posted by Wikipedia:

The context in which Christianity, and thus Christmas, was formed was the Roman Empire. The Romans honored Saturn, the ancient god of agriculture, each year beginning on December 17. In a festival called Saturnalia, they glorified past days when the god Saturn ruled. This festival lasted for seven days and included the winter solstice which by the Julian calendar fell on December 25. During Saturnalia the Romans feasted, postponed all business and warfare, exchanged gifts, and temporarily freed their slaves. Such traditions resemble those of Christmas and are used to establish a link between the two holidays. These and other winter festivities continued through January 1, the festival of Kalends, when Romans marked the day of the new moon and the first day of the month and the beginning of the religious year. As Isaac Asimov comments in his Guide to the Bible, "[C]onverts could join Christianity without giving up their Saturnalian happiness. It was only necessary for them to joyfully greet the birth of the Son rather than the Sun."

Interesting. So, Christmas as we know it is simply Saturnalia, a totally different (and again religious) holiday, and even one that goes AGAINST the Christian religion (only one God, yada yada yada).

Even more interesting, December 25th might not have been the date of Christ's actual birth. Various dates are given, including November 25th. Wait, so we're not even sure of when this guy was born, and we're celebrating his birth on a day that just happens to coincide with the end of a different religion's holiday that involves lots of recieving gifts? Methinks that the people that have made the "Christmas" holiday are just really greedy, especially the retailers that sell tons of crap for the "Christmas" holiday.

For people that live in the city, cars and motorcycles might be too big and expensive. Mopeds are a popular alternative in these situations.

Now, the average gasser moped gets really good fuel economy, because it's simply so small. Better than motorcycles, even. Heck, better than diesel cars. (But many don't beat diesel motorcycles.)

So, you're wondering, why not a diesel moped?

Back in 1952, a German company called Lohmann introduced their diesel assist motor for bicycles. You simply installed it on your bicycle, fired it up, and you were off. It was a tiny little thing, at 18cc, but it did the job. It was fueled by paraffin, not modern diesel fuel, and shares much in common with the model airplane diesels that use a mixture of kerosene, ether, and castor oil as fuel.

The very interesting part about these was the fuel economy claims. There are references to a fuel usage of 1 teaspoon per kilometer. 1 US gallon = 768 US teaspoons, 1 mile = 1.61 kilometers, for a fuel economy of... wait for it... 477.21 miles per US gallon.

However, these engines weren't all too durable, and not many were made. But, technology's advanced since then.

I'm proposing an "open source" diesel moped. The project could actually act in a similar way to Wikipedia, in which anyone can make modifications to the moped. Obviously, there would have to be engineers that would volunteer their free time to monitor the project, and make sure that nothing unsafe or impractical is done.

Once a workable design is created, possibly a company could be approached to produce this design.

Feel free to comment on this idea...