Free Republic

Agated neighborhood in an upscale Tampa suburb is a strange place to send your carburetors for rebuilding. The shop sits in the three-car garage of a lovely home, alongside a similarly lovely turquoise 1957 Chevrolet Nomad wagon. There is a long table with some chairs, and a workbench is parked next to a couple of soda blasters. All is lit by florescent bulbs overhead. This the modest domain of Riley’s Rebuilds, a carburetor rebuilding service headed by Riley Schlick. Riley is a 17-year-old girl: A surfing, skating, soccer-playing, Jeep-driving high school senior. Four of her high school friends, all girls,...

This past Sunday, James Carville mocked the discovery of buried uranium-enrichment equipment in the backyard of Shukur Ubaydi – a key leader of Iraq's drive to obtain nuclear weapons prior to the 1991 Gulf War. Carville derided the centrifuge parts as looking like "a carburetor some redneck would have in his garage." NBC's Russert did not challenge Carville on this astonishing display of partisanship dressed up as ignorance, but the statement revealed a great deal about Democratic strategy on the WMD debate that has already begun: Deny the relevance and importance of every piece of evidence, and assert that nothing...

I am posting this to inform everyone about how cars work, so they don't buy into scams about some product that claims to increase the gas mileage of a car. From the University of Wisconsin: Scientists have calculated the average amount of potential energy stored in various types of fuels used by humans as an energy source. Conversion factors: 1 gallon of fuel oil = 145,000 BTU 1 cubic foot of natural gas = 1,031 BTU 1 kilowatt hour of electricity = 3,412 BTU 1 cord of wood = 20,000,000 BTU 1 gallon gasoline = 125,000 BTU End quote As...