Why do power drills have R and L?

[Commander Kinsey]

Quit IT with THE capitalization.

[Commander Kinsey]

So do dogs and it's hilarious.

[rbowman]

If it's good enough for Ferrari... Even the Brits used them;

On my '60 Plymouth the wheel was held on with the standard studs and nuts. However, the entire brake drum assembly was a taper fit on the splined axle andheld in place by one castle nut. They were a pain in the ass. Getting the nut off generally required a breaker bar and a length of pipe. Then to get the brake drum off you needed a hub puller and that seldom went well either.

[rbowman]

For more hilarity watch a bird in high wind. Like airplanes they land upwind but if the wind speed is high enough they actually are going backwards relative to the ground. The touch down isn't too graceful.

[rbowman]

Medicare pays (mostly) for an annual physical. Being Medicare the provider does a mental acuity assessment. The nurse says three words and a few minutes later asks you what they were. She also has you draw a clock face with the hands pointing to a particular time. Last time around I got ornate and did the whole thing with Roman numerals.

If you flub the three words or clock I assume they dig deeper.

I would eat my .45 before I went into a nursing home.

[rbowman]

The press loves that generation shit. Woodstock Generation, Silent Generation, and so forth. I think it was '69 when they had a big funeral in San Francisco for 'Hippie, son of Media'.

[rbowman]

And with motorcycles to turn left you push on the right handlebar...

I'd been successfully countersteering since my father took the training wheels off my 24" bicycle. After having the physics of it all explained to me in a motorcycling class I damn near killed myself. It's as bad as explaining how walking really works. Some stuff you just do, screw the explanation.

[Jim Joyce]

Not quite. To turn left, you initially turn right by pushing on the left handlebar or pulling on the right handlebar. If you just push on the right handlebar you're going to be turning right.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well on a bike you turn by moving your body weight. The handlebars are there to stop you falling over

[The Natural Philosopher]

No. Because it's been proved that an analogue dial cam be read approximately in sub second times. And in particular fast movement - think altimeter unwinding - is way easier to understand at a glance.

Our brains are wired for analogue. Digital for precisions, analogue for rapidity.

Both for choice

[NY]

I've not used a Mac enough to have noticed that, but I know that Linux GUIs (Gnome on Ubuntu, and the GUI on Raspbian) have the OK and Cancel buttons the opposite way round to Windows. When I switch between the two, I always end up cancelling a dialogue box instead of continuing, until my brain switches over. I suppose Mac, being based on Unix, will adopt the same convention as Linux, OK on the right.

[NY]

Reversing a trailer/caravan is one skill I've never mastered. I found it very difficult even to keep the trainer in a straight line behind the car, never mind making it turn. I know the principle of counter steer, but my brain doesn't seem to be able to work out the negative feedback loop of how far to turn and when to straighten again to correct for any errors. Even reversing a car without trailer is not as easy as driving forwards, not because of the poorer visibility but because the car's tendency to self-centre when going forward (it wants to go straight and you have to deviate from that) is reversed when going backwards (if the steering is slightly to one side, it wants to become more so and you have to consciously apply correction to keep it straight).

When I'm reversing I tend to look forward and scan the left, centre and right mirrors to judge clearance and alignment with walls or white lines, rather then turning to look over my shoulder. Door mirrors, pointing downwards to show the car's rear wheels relative to a kerb or white lines, show you a view that is not possible by looking over your shoulder.

I presume boats with a steering wheel to control the rudder use the normal car convention of clockwise=right/starboard. Seeing the mechanics of a simple tiller rudder makes it blindingly obvious that you need to move the tiller in the opposite direction to the way the paddle moves. I wonder if anyone ever tried to make a linkage which required the tiller to be moved to the same side as you wanted to turn to see if this was a more intuitive user-interface.

[NY]

That's just showing off, putting Roman numerals on it. I've always wondered why a lot of clocks with Roman numerals use "IIII" rather than "IV" for 4. Roman numerals tend to be written in the form that uses fewest symbols, even if that may involve qualifying a number that is too large with symbols before to mean "subtract this little bit".

I'd be tempted to draw my Old Peculier clock with the hands back to front but the numbers also the opposite direction

just to show that I was still on the ball.

My dad is in the very early stages of dementia, and he went for tests which did the standard things like remembering a list of numbers or words and repeating them in reverse order. He said he doubted he could have done it perfectly even when he was younger, because like me, his memory for sequences of things in short-term memory has never been good. He and I are hopeless at mental arithmetic because we can't visualise the numbers and the running total so as to add the corresponding units, tens, hundreds etc and keep track of carry digits. Given a pen and paper, it's trivial - even if a bit laborious - because you can see and refer back to the numbers you're working on.

[NY]

The exact science of how you make a bicycle or motorbike turn is more complicated that you'd imagine. It's why a bike will stay upright if you are riding it, but not if you push it without anyone riding. It used to be through that the gyroscopic force of a spinning wheel helped keep the bike from toppling sideways, but this has been found to be very small and not the complete explanation. Apparently a bicycle with a central disc inside the wheel that spins in the opposite direction, but with the same moment of inertia so as to cancel out the gyroscopic forces on the wheel, is no more difficult to ride.

The handlebars do a bit more than act as something to stop you falling over. If you simply tilted the bike, the way the steering is set up would make the front fork rotate in the opposite direction - eg if you tilt the bike to the right, the fork will rotate to the left. You have to apply a force to counteract this.

As to whether you initially apply a force in the opposite direction before applying one in the correct direction (*) - well maybe you do, subconsciously. You'd need strain gauges on the handlebar grips to prove it!

(*) Eg if you want to turn right, you initially push the left handle bar slightly and then turn the fork by pushing the right handlebar.

[The Natural Philosopher]

My sodding nephew capsized the dinghy getting that wrong...

[The Natural Philosopher]

you might have to do that on a heavy motorcycle, but on a bike you simply lean into the turn and your reflexes then rotate the handlebars slightly into the turn to stop you falling over...

[FromTheRafters]

on 4/20/2020, NY supposed :

Asthetic balance. VIII is 'chunkier' than IV so they use IIII instead.

[Bob Eager]

Only partially the case. The Romans used IIII a lot anyway. Allegedly because IV was an abbreviation for IVPITER, one of the gods.

[FromTheRafters]

On a bicycle going along you 'punch' the right handlebar and fall over, on a normal motorcycle on the highway it is an emergency lane change maneuver to the right. I had to do it once, it works but it is scary.

[Tim Lamb]

In message <r7jqh3$n68$ [e-mail], NY [e-mail] writes

Ah! Mentally you have to consider what you would need to do if the ball hitch was in your hands. Translating that thought into what steering wheel movement will have the same effect is then much simpler.

Consider the same job but with a twin axle turntable trailer!