FUCK Lincoln and F U C K their new car.

[ZaphodBurner]

Never claimed it. If anything it's "owned" by the Native Americans who once lived on this earth before we fucked raped and destroyed them, though they'd never place claim to it.

The tribes around the Black Rock Desert were pretty brutal to each other. Some were driven into the mountains, some were forced to assimilate and some simply went extinct. The Paiute and the Washoe (Washo) tribes warred frequently and the latter were disallowed by the former from riding or keeping horses in order to keep them basically subservient.

In terms of fucked raped and destroyed, they did unto each other for thousands of years what the White Man finally did unto them. There was warfare, genocide and politics there for hundreds or thousands of years before whitey upped the ante. And it's arguable that the same tribals hunted or killed the mammoth, sabertooth cat and other local species into extinction as well.

In terms of the the Black Rock Desert, mother earth doesn't give a fuck who or what you are; she'll kick your ass. There's nothing out there to kill that the sun and the desert haven't already scorched off the planet. One of the playa's most endearing qualities, actually.

-c

[thirt33n]

word zaph.

nice

[Zim]

Never claimed it. If anything it's "owned" by the Native Americans who once lived on this earth before we fucked raped and destroyed them, though they'd never place claim to it.

The tribes around the Black Rock Desert were pretty brutal to each other. Some were driven into the mountains, some were forced to assimilate and some simply went extinct. The Paiute and the Washoe (Washo) tribes warred frequently and the latter were disallowed by the former from riding or keeping horses in order to keep them basically subservient.

In terms of fucked raped and destroyed, they did unto each other for thousands of years what the White Man finally did unto them. There was warfare, genocide and politics there for hundreds or thousands of years before whitey upped the ante. And it's arguable that the same tribals hunted or killed the mammoth, sabertooth cat and other local species into extinction as well.

In terms of the the Black Rock Desert, mother earth doesn't give a fuck who or what you are; she'll kick your ass. There's nothing out there to kill that the sun and the desert haven't already scorched off the planet. One of the playa's most endearing qualities, actually.

-c

Nice, thanks for the information Zaphod. I was looking for some before posting but I'm obviously ignorant of much of the history behind the desert. Something that will be remedied.

[gyre]

I believe it is quite arguable that the transition into a space-faring, ubiquitous information consuming race we now are is directly related to oil, and wars over oil. The nearly 7 billion souls on this planet would probably be more like 1 billion without it. We humans would have something like a 70% mortality rate before age 5.

It also seems that once science began to explain more than superstition, the change into efficient energy usage was inevitable, and oil is just one more link in a chain that started after our local star ignited. We'll move to hydrogen and solar, and things yet discovered or conceived, and oil will be a memory. There will be horrors and downsides to those, and we will have similar rantfests about those...later. Our use of energy will get more efficient, but our demands will continue to climb. Maybe we are evolving into Homo vulcanus

Space-faring?
Did I miss something?

[ZaphodBurner]

...zim, you may just implode before tomorrow.
drink less coffee homey.

you ARE walking to burningman next year right?

Fuck man, at this point I might just to prove a point.

Has anyone ever done it? How long do you think it would take?

Sure! Fremont, Kit Carson, Applegate, Lassen, etc.

"By August, one wagon train after another had followed Lassen's tracks into the dry and desolate wasteland now known as the Black Rock Desert. While the first groups had sufficient water and grass for their livestock, resources were quickly depleted. The highly touted tales of plentiful water and grass for livestock quickly proved false. By late summer, conditions deteriorated and the situation became desperate.

Oxen teams and humans alike began to suffer the effects of the relentless desert sun. In a state of delirium, livestock would stampede towards a mirage on the dry lake, only to collapse in exhaustion onto the baked and barren playa, perishing where they fell. The mortality rate for their human counterparts wasn't much better. By late summer, abandoned wagons and gravesites littered the desertscape. It is said that small wooden crosses from less fortunate travelers would be passed every few hundred yards along the route that year. For travelers west, the Applegate-Lassen trail would come to be known as "The 1849 Trail of Death"." http://www.sharetrails.org/magazine/article.php?id=891

fuckman, some of the emigrant accounts speak of women who walked across the desert PREGNANT. Not even John goddamn Wayne was made of whatever that stuff was. That blows me away.

edit: Supposedly there are remains of an old cavalry camp or fort in the hills around the lakebed somewhere. Anybody know?

[gyre]

Of course, they only had to do it one-way.....

[Zim]

Hahaha, holy shit Zaph. Are you with the Playa Historical society that was next to the DMV this year (I'm mangling the title)?

[theCryptofishist]

If anything it's "owned" by the Native Americans who once lived on this earth before we fucked raped and destroyed them, though they'd never place claim to it.

Putting aside the probably different definitions of "ownership" that existed in the local cultures, I have difficulty believing that they claimed the playa at all. I think it was a place to be avoided, no hunting, no fishing, no gathering, no knappable minerals, no water, I can't think of why they would spend five minutes on it, unless it was part of some "vision quest" type experience.

And Indians did have landscape altering effects on this continent. And perhaps drove the mega-fauna extinct. I think that the sentimental attribution of super ecological harmony to tribal americans is potentially dangerous.

[Dustdevil]

Most likely that was filmed on El Mirage Dry Lake. That is also BLM land in SoCal. It is also used by the SCTA and various rocket clubs. It does closely resemble the Playa, but much closer to LA and therefore cheaper to film at. Also, the LA film industry has an ongoing relationship with the BLM office that controls El Mirage.

[ygmir]

I'm with you,
IMHO:
if they'd had cars, they'd a driven 'em, if they had chainsaws, they'd a clear cut....humans is humans............they just didn't have the stuff.........
I've also been involved in the "Kennewick Man" and other potential ancient European travelers here, 10K or so years ago.
The "Natives" (walked here earlier), killed them all 'cause the looked different ...............it's even in their legends......Satika (sp?), etc, meaning "white devil" or references to blue eyes, light or red hair, large stature........etc.......

Doesn't make natives bad, just makes them the same as everyone else, no pedestal to stand on......

ok,
off my soapbox now........

[AntiM]

The ad looks photoshopped to the point where the surface looks like it could be Bonneville (white salt flats not hardpan playa), but the mountains are the wrong shape. Wrong mountains for Black Rock too.

My ancestors were handcart pioneers, i.e. no livestock to haul the goods, they pulled them across the plains and mountains. Maybe that's why I like the playa so much.

A new car isn't going to kill the planet. You can bike all you want, but until you convince 5.666 billion people to stop reproducing for a generation, the world as we know it is gone. The planet will survive just fine, and some form of life will continue, major change is inevitable.

[gyre]

Exactly.
We don't have a pollution problem.
We have a population issue.

Looks like germs will take care of that with disease.
Evolution at work.

[Ugly Dougly]

Never claimed it. If anything it's "owned" by the Native Americans who once lived on this earth before we fucked raped and destroyed them, though they'd never place claim to it.

The tribes around the Black Rock Desert were pretty brutal to each other. Some were driven into the mountains, some were forced to assimilate and some simply went extinct. The Paiute and the Washoe (Washo) tribes warred frequently and the latter were disallowed by the former from riding or keeping horses in order to keep them basically subservient.

In terms of fucked raped and destroyed, they did unto each other for thousands of years what the White Man finally did unto them. There was warfare, genocide and politics there for hundreds or thousands of years before whitey upped the ante. And it's arguable that the same tribals hunted or killed the mammoth, sabertooth cat and other local species into extinction as well.
...

-c

Lesson: If you really want to subjugate someone's ass, you gotta go high-tech.

[theCryptofishist]

Oh it needn't be high tech, just higher than what the others got.

[Hoodie]

it's pretty self-centric to think that ad was targeted at us. it's no worse than any other car ad. you may or may not like cars or car ads in general, but this is not the one to get riled up over, as there are many other more effective ways to help create change than get angry about scenery and music.

in fact, I never would have seen this ad if it weren't for this post, I bet that's true for a lot of others here, too.

[DoriumLux]

LOL.

Looks like they looked into this a little too deeply. You must not have seen many car commercials in your life time. I have seen many, many car commercials that look like they are filmed on the playa. May just be the Bonneville flats in freaking Utah. It's nothing new. Bonneville is infamous.

"Thousands of visitors, commercial filmmakers, and of course, high speed auto racers, make the Bonneville Salt Flats a world famous destination."


OMG!! Is that the playa?!?!

No...wait. It's Bonneville flats yet again!!

[oFZo]

I think that the sentimental attribution of super ecological harmony to tribal americans is potentially dangerous.

Potentially wrong, yes. But dangerous? In what way?

until you convince 5.666 billion people to stop reproducing for a generation, the world as we know it is gone.

I have a family in my neighborhood with 9 children.
Two of the 7 daughters are pregnant of their own 3rd and 4th...

I can't think of anything that pisses me off more at the moment.

[theCryptofishist]

I think that the sentimental attribution of super ecological harmony to tribal americans is potentially dangerous.

Potentially wrong, yes. But dangerous? In what way?

I do think that living lies is dangerous--sooner or later your lie clashes with reality in an unpleasant way. I think that having the mantle of woo-woo earth shaman ends up continuing to marginalize the indians--why should we work to give you prosperity, you have a mystical oneness with the earth instead? I can't develop a "green" consciousness, I'm german american, not indian.

I think we do need to learn how to balance our needs with the needs of other species on this planet, not only for the usual reasons, but also, for instance, I think that living in a place where there are no large preditors that can potentially eat us, diminishes us. (Although, I don't know that I want people eaten, I just think we'll get arrogant if there's nothing big and dangerous out there.) And tribal peoples have an incredible knowledge base from years of dependancy on subtle things, but it's a lived knowledge, not mystical.

[Bob]

Pontiac!

[Bob]

Indian pit dwelling, El Mirage, 1938

[Bob]

[betrdanevr]

Well, I've yet to think that I have worked one single day to give prosperity to Indians, nor do I believe in that marginalization ( a word? ). LOL

I'm also of German heritage. And I don't expect for anybody to kiss my ass.

[Bob]

Bonneville, 1948

[Key Man]

British duo sets first supersonic land-speed record

GERLACH, Nevada (CNN) -- The British Thrust SSC set the first supersonic land-speed record Wednesday when it streaked across the Nevada desert faster than the speed of sound -- not once, but twice.

The jet-powered car rocketed by at 759.333 mph on its first run, and about 30 minutes later set the record when it was clocked at 766.109 mph on its second attempt.

The speed of sound, which varies according to weather and altitude, was calculated Wednesday morning at 748.111 mph. Temperatures were cooler than normal in the Black Rock Desert, 125 miles north of Reno, making the vast region more conducive to faster speeds.

Team leader Richard Noble said Thrust's engines are more efficient, and the speed of sound is lower, when temperatures are cooler and the humidity is higher.

[gyre]

Wednesday?

[vertigo900]

Enable the bbcode on your profile so the quotes work.
________________________

The ePlaya webmasters should have all new accounts default settings allow BBCode in their postings. (ATTN: ePlaya webmasters ) It would sure reduce the number of newbies posting messy quote-referenced replies. Also, a spell-check would be a nice touch, too, for all the spelling-challenged keypad-fumbling folks posting here. (Mysefl included ) However, it seems too obvious of a solution; maybe I'm missing something jor it's been discussed before...it wouldn't be the first time.

[gyre]

I have spellcheck.
It doesn't work on some words or if you miss it anyway.

[ZaphodBurner]

766.109 miles per hour!!!

I'm trying not to touch myself.

That's only 761.109 MPH faster than the BRC speed limit. I wonder how many people shook their fists and yelled "SLOW DOWN! You're kicking up dust" as it puttered past. The cool thing about that art car is, the driver wouldn't be able to hear people yelling, of course, because the sound wouldn't be able to catch up...

I'm still tryin...

I bet they wouldn't do it this year. "759...760...almost there...761..." *POOF* ....playa dune! "740...600...5. Shit! Hey, can somebody give me a push? I bogged down again..."

-c

[Kenny Z]

I wonder how many people shook their fists and yelled "SLOW DOWN! You're kicking up dust" as it puttered past.

-c

Ha, I got yelled at a few times while leaving in the VW. I left on Sunday afternoon when the wind started kicking the dust up. The bus ran like shit so I had to rev it and ride the clutch to keep it going. Still doing around 5, definitely under 10 and kept getting yelled at to slow down? Amazing the optical illusion a revving 1600cc engine combined with Mother Nature's rage creates!

Anywhoo, enough of that, I mainly wanted to comment on the pics Bob posted. Pretty cool. I wonder what they did about their air filters out there. Back then, carbs were pretty sensitive and I could imagine after a couple of runs those bikes started running like shit.

[vertigo900]

...zim,

you ARE walking to burningman next year right?

Fuck man, at this point I might just to prove a point.

Has anyone ever done it? How long do you think it would take?

In 2006, 2 guys from Truckee road mtn bikes on back roads. It took 3 days and someone helped transport some of their playa supplies in.

I agree, oil is an archaic 19th century fuel. If the amount of $ put into the oil industry lobby and R&D was diverted into solar, wind, hydrogen and cold fusion development, we could begin to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and also be at the forefront of the next largest industry. If you haven't already seen it, check out A Crude Awakening; the sobering film that inspired the name of the BM07 performance art.

In reality, all of our major global issues are products of two massive, under discussed problems...exponential human population growth combined with the growing popularity of consumer-based economies in developing and especially developed countries. Until these become our most important social and political topics and we begin to address these issues, our problems will only worsen exponentially. It has happened before in smaller civilizations like Easter Island, the Mayans, the Anasazi, Mesopotamia, etc. Read a thorough discussion, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. It's by the same author who wrote the Nobel winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel; available on dvd.