Mike Marlow responds:
Well, I am a messy person, but I dumped the box BECAUSE the snake was in it, not to get to the chisels which were right under its middle. He (she?) already seemed less than amused at my disturbing his nap, which made me grateful for temps in the high 30s.
Charlie Self "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good." H. L. Mencken
A kid who survives growing up in the country on the bio-dense Gulf Coast has learned, among other things, to: never step over a log (snake); never pick up anything on the ground, like a brick, with your bare hand (snake, scorpion); never lean on a tree in the summer (asps); walk around all suspicious depression (yellow jackets); look into the hen house nests before reaching for the eggs (snake, skunk, et al); shine a light into the almost empty feed barrel before trying to scoop out feed (rats and mice), and basically never put any appendage anywhere that you haven't checked out first (all the above, plus).
There are other hazards, but those you only need once to learn.
Heh. Yes, well, I was a city boy originally, but with country parents (Virginia & Kentucky). So I learned. One thing you learn in upstate NY, where rock walls abound, or did 50 years ago, is to not sit with whacking the rocks. Every year, a few hospital emergency rooms get cases of ass bite from copperheads, a snake that is both aggressive and toting a real nasty necrosis causing venom.
Some years ago, I stepped into a depression at the base of a cedar tree I was getting ready to affix a sign to. Never again. Emergency rooms are not fun when they're treating multiple yellowjacket stings that have you at the point where drawing a breath is a huge amount of effort.
We don't have asps or scorpions here or where I was raised.
Gratitude for small things!
Charlie Self "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good." H. L. Mencken
Blacksnake bite (at least a US blacksnake bite) doesn't even draw blood. Just leaves some toothmarks, and pulling the snake off feels like releasing velcro. DAMHIKT.
>
and out west, never reach up to a rock above your line of sight when hiking or rock climbing. damhikt.
so no woodworking, eh?
Yep. I learned that one as a ten year while on a geology field trip with my Dad to the central mineral region in Texas, around Llano. There were some BIG rattles snakes on, in and about those rocks. The dinosaur footprints in the river bed were kinda neat, too.
Sure hope that you didn't hurt the snake Charlie. It didn't chew it's way into the box, the mice it had eaten did that. Snakes don't chew. They make good pets though. %-)
Dave in Fairfax
I learned all I needed to know one night in Jackson, MS.
I was at some bar where boats can tie up inside. While waiting for a cab to take me back to my hotel, a beetle the size of a hubcap walked across the parking lot.
That was good enough to chase me back to New England!
Barry
Properly done this stuff is anything but fragile. We're talking a technology that is already tough enough to be used in artillery shells and can use microengineered materials that start with stuff like diamond-like coatings. A diamond-coated work table anyone? (Not that we'd be likely to use diamond alone for a work table surface because it's too prone to chipping.)
Now when you start talking about stuff like that the first thought is naturally that it will be ungodly expensive. However it won't be at all expensive in another couple of decades. The basic materials (carbon, etc.) are cheap and the costs of producing them are in a nosedive. The cost of putting a layer of near-diamond on something is already so low the stuff is used as a wear coating on hard disk platters.
To give you a reference point, consider a $50 microwave oven. You could have built the equivalent oven 50 years ago, including the control system. But it would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars even in quantity. The notion of using a dedicated computer to control a single kitchen appliance would have stuck folks as insane in
1954.
Most of the problems in those comparisons have to do with accuracy, which in turn is achieved by rigidity in modern designs. That in turn requires a combination of mass of material, careful manufacturing to close tolerances and good design. With MEMS-based designs the first goes away, the second drops to extremely low cost, leaving only the third component -- good design -- which should be cookbook technology by that time.
Like the 1954 microwave oven building such a device with today's technology (if we even could) would be both extremely expensive and absurdly fragile. It would suffer from all the problems you point out and then some. (Recalibration anyone?) The point is that we're well on the way to dealing with those problems with the development of MEMS and related technologies.
Micro devices are tough, by their very nature. MIT has built micro turbines for jet engines out of silicon that spin faster and can handle much higher temperatures that conventional full-size engines. The result is incredible power-to-weight ratios. (Want to build a flying skateboard a la 'Back To The Future 2'? The researchers figured it would take an array of about 500 of these micro-jet engines, each less than an inch square.)
You don't usually find either snakes or mice in computers. And even if you did, would it matter? Okay, mouse shit in the fans might be a problem and mouse piss in the power supply would provide its own distinctive aroma. But still . . .
--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes
"Swingman" wrote in news:Mq-dneo snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:
That's a really pretty area; Mom and Dad lived around there for around 15 or so years after he retired (he from Tx, she from OK). We visited quite a few times ...
Dad used to say: "If it stings, stinks, or sticks ya, it's in Texas".
Regards,
JT
When a failsafe system fails, it fails by failing to fail /safe/.
(^8
I thought we were cutting down on the political threads ?
Andy Dingley wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Dad would've particularly liked your response, as did I. Good thing I wasn't drinking when I read this ...
Regards, JT
Actually, you got right to the heart of what I find a little sad about it. Of course nobody wants to lop off a finger on a table saw, but when I was a little kid we used to shoot one another with BB guns and play on rusty jungle gyms set on blacktop. Now, half the people have turned into a bunch of whining sissies! Sometimes you do things that might just be a little unsafe with a tool because it's a calculated risk, and it ends up leading to innovation. If everything is monitored and controlled to the hilt, you'd be able to do anything the tool is designed to do, but you are absolutely bound to the limits that tool has. Sure, you're safe- and the end product is technically perfect, but it comes with a cost. Instead of a cut or a bruise, some of the small defects that add charm to the finished product and your pride in it's construction is taken away- and that's what I like about making things in the first place!
Aha! You've been reading "Prey", haven't you? Interesting ideas, it'll be neat to see how it all comes out- but remember, we still don't have flying cars! (No matter how much I may want one- boy would that be spiffy...) Not everything that people predict comes to pass- something totally different could come out of thin air, and up end everything you've said. I still think it'll be a little sad, but that won't stop me from staring at new technologies in admiration.
Aut inveniam viam aut faciam
Dave in Fairfax responds:
The mouse bit makes sense. I don't think I'd care for a snake "pet" at all.
Charlie Self "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good." H. L. Mencken
I don't have any pets at present, but I sometimes pet-sit for friends. Between the snakes, the lizards (a green iguana) and the weasels, the snakes are by far the most appealing.
I want a Saw Stop for iguanas.
Man, I hear that. I'd rather get nailed by a medium boa than by a large iguana. I always wear leather gloves with the big ones. Black snakes, in this area are usually common kings or black rats, in other areas they may be indigos or black racers. The kings and indigos tend to be pretty friendly, and good pets, the racers and rats are nippy, but not dangerous.
Dave in Fairfax
It's all pythons round here. A while ago two of us were trying to put a 6' burmese into a 4' tank it didn't want to go into. We _couldn't_ bend it - damn, snakes are strong !
The reticulated python is a pussycat in comparison. Strange how snakes can actually have a personality like this, but I understand it's quite common for the species.
Of course almost exactly the same sentiments apply to modern power tools compared to their unpowered predecessors. (Anyone here think hewing a plank or beam with a broadax was safe?)
It's where you choose to place yourself on the continium.
Nope. Just writing about the industry. Between that and applying what I've seen in the labs and on the websites. The most speculative element of what I'm 'predicting' here is the cost of the finished tool. Most of the rest of the stuff already either exists in at least proof-of-principle form or is in advanced design.
The flying car is a very interesting example. The basic problem with the flying car, as originally conceived, is that it takes a great deal of judgement to fly safely. You cannot approach an airplane/helicopter/autogyro with the same attitude people have towards automobiles or the death rate becomes astronomical. It's not a matter of brains or desire, but judgement. I don't have the right kind of judgement and that's why I quit taking flying lessons.
With modern control technology, machine intelligence, GPS and other stuff we are just about at the point where we can build a flying car that would be safe enough for the average person. In fact there are a couple of very promising projects underway right now. Of course this involves some infrastructure cost and, more importantly, some major modifications of the regulations. So it's becoming practical, but it still may not happen.
I won't guarantee anything about the technology that will be used, but I'm reasonably sure that in a few decades we'll have tools with the capabilities I'm describing.
--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes
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