THAT GODDAMNED HAT!

I was scarred for life, years ago, as a spoiled-rotten, car-crazy 15-year-old teenager allegedly growing up in North Carolina and eagerly anticipating my 16th birthday and my due licensure as a motor-vehicle operator.  I was already a very skillful driver.  I just needed the license.

One day in November of 1961 my father brought home from the Oldsmobile dealership he partially owned a Hot-As-Hell metallic PINK 1962 “Starfire” 2-door coupe, with a wide satin-aluminum streak running along each side from nose to tail, a HUGE, thirsty V-8 engine with 4-barrel carb, dual exhausts with throaty rumble, bucket seats, console with “stick” shifter, tachometer, etc.  Those accouterments were the automotive rage in the early 1960’s, and that car had ALL of them!  I almost could not believe my good fortune that I would soon be driving around in that machine, arrogantly dismissing all the girls who would SURELY be desperate to ride around with ME!

Little did I know.

Each day my 16th birthday grew closer, and my slavering appetite got only larger.  I pored over that beautiful, garish car constantly, washing it, waxing it, touching it, rubbing it, loving it, almost LICKING IT!  I was CONVINCED that my father was drunk when he ordered the car, as NO ONE I knew had EVER had a metallic PINK automobile!  I had never even SEEN one nor even HEARD of one!

Then my life crashed and burned.

Sometime in the Spring of 1962, just a few short months before my birthday in August, my father drove home one day in an Oldsmobile “98” 4-door sedan of the same year, the one being then driven by his business partner (and his son, who was a close friend of mine).  I was heartbroken and crushed to learn that those guys had blithely “swapped” cars with each other, and that now my “friend” was going to be riding around in MY car, having raw, unprotected SEX with his hot girlfriend in the back seat of MY CAR!  GOD-DAMMIT!

I DEMANDED to know WHY my father had GIVEN AWAY MY CAR?  How dare he do so?  Just before I was old enough to truly enjoy my unexpected good fortune?  His pathetic reply was that he INSISTED on wearing his goddamned HAT while driving, and he could not comfortably wear his goddamned hat in the “Starfire,” so he preferred the boring old plain-vanilla metallic-silver-with-gray-upholstery Olds sedan that would accommodate his goddamned HAT!  Then he warned me, in no uncertain terms, that I was NOT to bring the matter up again!  He was mean as a snake, especially when drunk, and he was still bigger than I, so I had to back down, fuming silently!

My life was so OVER!

Meanwhile, my worst fears materialized as my “friend” drove around in MY STARFIRE with his hot girlfriend, and I was still walking and riding a bike.  Goddammit, I was pissed off!  I could not BELIEVE how screwed I was!  Then, it got even worse.  Someone (my “friend” or his father) trashed the pink “Starfire” then swapped it for another black-and-white “Starfire,” and my pink car disappeared, forever.  Meanwhile, I eventually got my driver’s license and proceeded to tear through a soybean field one night driving way too fast and overshooting a STOP sign in that “98”!  It had really bad brakes!  That was not discovered, however, until long after my parents had moved to another town and I had already been "imprisoned" in a boarding school for several months!  They never figured it out for sure!

I guess the boarding school was my punishment for threatening to have just too much fun with that Starfire!

FIBONACCI SQUARES

I thought of an interesting progression of the “Fibonacci Series” the other morning.  The Series is the sequence of integers, each numeral of which is the sum of the two preceding numerals in the sequence.  I discovered that the sum of the squares of adjacent numerals in the Series yields higher alternating numerals later in the Series!  I have no clue of any particular significance.

Thus, the initial part of the Series, beginning with zero.  Note that “1” repeats twice, since “1” is the succeeding total of “0” and the first “1,” which necessarily follows “0”:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, etc.

SQUARES:

0, 1, 1, 4, 9, 25, 64, 169, 441, etc.

SUMS OF ADJACENT SQUARES:

1, 2, 5, 13, 34, 89, 233, 610, etc.

It should be noted that above about 13” in the Series, the quotient ratio of adjacent numerals in the Series is the so-called “Golden Ratio” of phi (Φ—“fee”—1.618) or 1/1.618 (= 0.618 = 1/Φ).  

The Fibonacci Series may be graphically projected as the addition of ever-larger squares forming ever-larger, outward-spiraling “Golden Rectangles."  Note that the quotient ratio of the Series increases or decreases by exactly “1” depending upon which “direction” one is going.  Consider that any square, therefore, is equal to the unit “1” since it is the same length on all sides.  That may account for the frequent manifestation of the Series in Nature as semi-liquid protoplasm expanding in all directions as it grows larger, such as the ever-larger chambered nautilus, the sprouting of leaves up a stem, etc.

So, employing the Pythagorean Theorem, the “hypotenusal” diagonals of the ever-larger graphic “Golden Rectangles” were also thus measured as the square roots of the aforesaid sums of the squares:

1, 1.414, 2.236, 3.605, 5.831, 9.434, 15.264, 24.698, etc.

AND, the quotient ratios of these higher adjacent “hypotenuses” more or less continue to manifest as the “Golden Ratio” of phi (Φ) = 1.618!!!  WOW!!

Just for grins, I also looked at the following, but I perceived no patterns or sequences:

ADJACENT SQUARE DIFFERENCES:

1, 0, 3, 5, 16, 39, 105, 271, etc.

DIFFERENCES, WITH ROUNDED SQUARE ROOTS:

⎷-1 (i), 1² + 2, 2 ²  + 1, 4² + 0, 6² + 3, 10² + 5, 16² + 15, etc.

I have speculated as to whether or not an exhaust pipe would scavenge “fluid” exhaust gases more efficiently from an internal-combustion cylinder if the diameter OR circumference OR cross-sectional area of the pipe were progressively enlarged by the Golden Ratio.  The overall length of the pipe would also inject an unknown variable, considering that most exhaust ports are at least an inch or larger in diameter at the start, and the pipe diameter would become very much larger very quickly!  And, consider whether the exhaust pipe should taper smoothly, like a  megaphone or trombone bell, or should it be stepped?  

As exhaust gases cool as they flow away from the cylinder(s), their requisite volume would likely decrease, so a non-flared exhaust pipe might be adequate.  Some drag-racing mechanics have cooled intake manifolds with dry ice to allow more unburned fuel-air mixture to flow into the combustion chamber(s) and have insulated the exhaust manifolds to RETAIN exhaust heat and improve exhaust-gas flows outward.