Model Airplanes

Many auto enthusiasts first develop their passion for cars by building models. You know, the kind where you break the parts off of a plastic “tree” and then get glue all over the house trying to assemble a model kit into something resembling an Ed Roth creation or famous Mustang race car as depicted on the model kit’s box. Your author got his initial start that way, and still has boxes of finished and semi-finished/mutilated models in the rafters of the garage. Digging them out of storage and playing with them now 40 or more years later is a sure way to rocket back to an easier time in the 1970s when all that mattered was playing outside with friends and getting that car or airplane model kit together before bedtime.

That’s why I was especially taken with CarTech’s latest book, Collecting Muscle Car Model Kits. As the press release states with truth, “Many owners of real muscle cars today were not old enough to buy them when the cars were new, of course. Yet kids of the 1960s and 1970s worshiped these cars to an extent completely foreign to kids today. If you couldn’t afford or were too young to buy a muscle car back then, what could you do? For many, the next best ting was to buy, collect, and build muscle car model kits.”

People still build models today, but there is also

Article source: http://www.mustangandfords.com/news/1810-book-review-collecting-muscle-car-model-kits/

Christopher Ragan is chair of Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission and director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.

The federal government announced this week that its carbon tax will apply in early 2019 to those provinces without their own – Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick. It also announced that most of the carbon-tax revenues will be returned through the income-tax system to households.

With this two-part policy, the feds have designed a smart package that will both reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and maintain most families’ purchasing power. But the government will need to carefully explain how both parts of the policy actually make sense.

Story continues below advertisement

Convincing people that a carbon tax will actually reduce GHG emissions is surprisingly difficult. But these policies have worked well in the jurisdictions that use them, such as British Columbia, the United Kingdom and California.

A carbon tax works by raising the prices consumers pay for anything with a carbon footprint; the more carbon, the greater the price increase. Consumers then respond to price changes by altering their buying behaviour. As gasoline gets more expensive, drivers begin the movement toward smaller or electric vehicles, or perhaps public transit. As heating oil rises in price, homeowners consider insulating their basement or turning down the thermostat. As jet fuel and airline tickets become pricier, vacationers will consider fewer airplane trips or different types of holidays.

As consumers adjust their spending, businesses also respond – especially by developing the

Article source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-trudeaus-carbon-tax-rebate-is-smart-but-complicated/

Christopher Ragan is chair of Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission and director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.

The federal government announced this week that its carbon tax will apply in early 2019 to those provinces without their own – Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick. It also announced that most of the carbon-tax revenues will be returned through the income-tax system to households.

With this two-part policy, the feds have designed a smart package that will both reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and maintain most families’ purchasing power. But the government will need to carefully explain how both parts of the policy actually make sense.

Story continues below advertisement

Convincing people that a carbon tax will actually reduce GHG emissions is surprisingly difficult. But these policies have worked well in the jurisdictions that use them, such as British Columbia, the United Kingdom and California.

A carbon tax works by raising the prices consumers pay for anything with a carbon footprint; the more carbon, the greater the price increase. Consumers then respond to price changes by altering their buying behaviour. As gasoline gets more expensive, drivers begin the movement toward smaller or electric vehicles, or perhaps public transit. As heating oil rises in price, homeowners consider insulating their basement or turning down the thermostat. As jet fuel and airline tickets become pricier, vacationers will consider fewer airplane trips or different types of holidays.

As consumers adjust their spending, businesses also respond – especially by developing the

Article source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-trudeaus-carbon-tax-rebate-is-smart-but-complicated/

F-22s Spend Time in Hangers Due To Low Readiness53 WEG CC, Tyndall AFB

The United States faces a dangerous imbalance with security threats on the rise and military preparedness ravaged by years’ worth of the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA)-driven defense budget cuts. That is why Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’ recent directive for the Navy and Air Force to increase the readiness of their fighter aircraft is so important. In it he states: “…we must focus on meeting our most critical priorities first. These include meeting a minimum of 80% mission capability rates [the proportion of time an aircraft is in a functioning condition to perform its mission] for our FY 2019 Navy and Air Force F-35, F-22, F-16, and F/A-18 inventories… starting in FY2019.” However, meeting this important target will require much more than a memorandum. Ensuring fighter aircraft can successfully fly and fight in accordance with the national security strategy will require sufficient, dedicated, and stable funding over the long term, plus a focus on accelerated modernization. Our defense strategy is only viable if it is properly resourced for our forces to be ready to fight.

What is “readiness” and why should it matter to the American people? Simply put, readiness is the condition where our military forces have sufficient equipment, personnel, skills, proficiency, and sustainment necessary to fight and win our nation’s wars. It matters

Article source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davedeptula/2018/10/25/to-improve-combat-readiness-end-the-budget-control-act/

There’s a certain kind of magic that happens when technology augments conventional processes and breathes new life into them — and that’s exactly the kind of magic we see with digital twins.

READ NEXT

Manufacturers and engineers have created 3D drawings of their systems and products by hand, then moved on to modeling those on the computer via CAD/CAM software, and now, with the help of cameras, sensors, and omnipresent internet connections, these visualizations are brought to life in the form of digital twins.

Essentially, a digital twin is a representation of a real-world entity or system in the virtual world. It’s that simple.

According to Gartner, half of the world’s largest industrial companies will use digital twins by 2021, resulting in those organizations gaining a 10 percent improvement in effectiveness.

Digital twins drive the business impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) by offering a powerful way to monitor and control assets and processes.

Obviously, not all digital twins are equal. Depending on the use case, manufacturers and engineers need to decide the complexity of the digital twin that needs to be developed.

In some cases, a simple model based on clearly defined functional or technical parameters will suffice. In other cases, physics-based, high-fidelity digital twins might be needed. Some might even demand the use of compound systems composed of other digital twins to provide the best results.

Developing digital twins, therefore, might

Article source: https://techhq.com/2018/10/decoding-the-opportunities-that-digital-twins-create-for-businesses/