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Tornado in a Can
geyser writes "What stuff matters more than a device that can tear things apart? Frank Polifka has a patent on his Windhexe device that creates a tornado force wind. Besides pulverizing concrete, it can pulverize small objects including jelly fish, and chicken feet without destroying the organic compounds. The chickens don't like it. Is this really a prototype Quake weapon? I could only find newspaper articles about the device. Has anyone seen it in action and can you give us a first hand report?"
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" Whether there are vast riches to be made from pulverizing chicken poop or poultry parts into powder remains to be seen. The trick will be whether the machine can transform the various substances into products worth more than the processing costs."
Sounds like he's trying to kick up a real shitstorm.
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IDE hard drive!
(No, seriously. The warranties are for, like, 2 years now. They slowly spin themselves apart until the data is nonsense.)
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I'm sure this is cool, but that doesn't exactly fill my heart with fear.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Seen it in action?
HAHAHA, the damn thing takes care of human feet just as well as chickens. And I thought it was just s snake-in-a-can joke. Damn toys
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Finally! Something we can use to fight off Casanova Frankenstein and Captain Amazing! Was it designed by Dr. Heller?
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
With great tornado in a can comes great responsibility.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It's for Apparatus and method for circular vortex air flow material grinding.
P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.h tml&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=Polifka&OS=Poli fka&RS=Polifka
It's dated March 7, 2002 and the applicant is listed as Polifka, Francis D..
You can read it at http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Sounds like a good way to reduce land fill space. Just pulverize everything to the molecular level shake and let settle.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
somehow found their way to local trailer parks, resulting in total devastation when they were mistaken for cans of beer.
Just what I need to get my little nephews for christmas... forget the plastic helicopter.. or maybe they can fly it thru their own tornado...
Now that will ROCK!!!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
To test their theory, the Vortex folks have thrown in rocks, diapers, tomatoes, sweet potato rejects from the farm down the road, 400 pounds of Oreo cookies, frozen pizza dough, even a dead bird.
:(
Damn...what a waste of Oreo's
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
... at least that's what it sounds like.
So when a grain buyer came to Polifka and asked him to design a portable machine to mill grain, Polifka started tinkering around in his workshop on the farm. He has a high school diploma and a certificate from diesel engine school, but he's been dreaming up machines for most of his life. Over the years, he's invented everything from an industrial-strength mulcher to a vehicle to carry implements around the farm.
Even so, it took him 15 years to make a tornado in a can that he was satisfied with. And though physicists and engineers are at a loss as to how exactly it works, he's happy to explain how he made it.
It sounds like this guy is about as far removed from shedules and deadlines as anyone I have ever seen....
This again proves that it's not a degree or an education, but thinking outside the box that will move technology forward.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
I want a blamethrower.
Engineers shut it down and quickly huddle, mulling over a complex mathematical solution they think might help them fix the noise.
But Polifka, a stocky man with a snow-white beard and twinkling eyes, just opens the machine, grabs a broom handle and pokes at a flap of metal inside the cone. The adjustment made, he shuts the machine and starts it again. The noise is gone.
He sounds like Santaclause... and a magician.
"Each year, the U.S. poultry industry generates about 4 million tons of blood, feathers, heads, feet and entrails, including some 300,000 tons on the Delmarva Peninsula."
I thought they had this problem licked with the advent of the chicken McNugget."Running that material through a drier and then through Polifka's machine could produce a powder form of those poultry byproducts that could be sold as a flavoring"
Geek #1:"Mmmmm,these Gorditas are wonderful!!"Geek #2:"Yeah, but they could use a little more chicken back if you ask me."
Inventor: "As you can see, it sucks and it cuts!"
Wayne: "Well, it definitely does suck"
Wait 'til the military gets this one.
This space for rent.
Tornado in a can?
It looks to me like a tornado in a room. Judging by that picture, this will work great as a prototype Quake weapon. You just have to tell your enemy "OK, now sit right here under this blue cone looking thing, while I pulverize you".
Not exactly portable is it?
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
I think I'll pass on the company pizza party.
Can't wait to use this on my friends.
This space for rent.
It sounds a bit like James Dyson's vacuum cleaner.
;o)
http://www.dyson.co.uk/.
One shudders to think what teenage boys might get up to with it
The BOfH seats at his desk... Calmly plays another party of Quake... Someone rings the door bell.
Who's there? - says the BOfH with some irritation that someone messed with his chance to break his 1374th frag record.
Oh, this is department XXX. You have a problem, the network doesn't work.
Couldn't you say that by the phone?..
Oh, well. We could but it was busy and we thought it was a lot easier to talk to you directly...
Well, come in... - The BOfH presses the button and the door opens...
Ooops sorry what is this funny small dark room here?
Oh, well. That's a small hall to avoid noises and dust coming up here. We have some sensitive equipement here... Just close the outdoor so I can open the inner door...
Oh, cool. Yeah, you amy be right, you have quite a dusty corridor just outside, you kn.. BAHM! FRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!
A bunch of dust flows over the corridor, the BOfH calmly concludes: "No person, no problem... back to the game..."
Inventors: Polifka, Francis D.; (Hays, KS)
:P
Notice that Francis is from Kansas.
What's this Submit thingy do?
Anyone else see this as Windh.exe?
Some nasty trojan that's a tornado for your HD?
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Applications? Don't you get it? 4 ton's of chickengarbage in - out: millions worth of nutrious healthy cosmetic's ingredients! It's the American Dream come true - one of these and you can make money of everything.
Make that "Taz of derivative, unoriginal Warner Bros, Inc. fame..." and I'll agree. THe original was simply "the Tasmanian devil".
Taz is to the Tasmanian devil as Ariel is to The Little Mermaid. The former is mass market pablum for the kiddies; the latter is an old classic stolen by soulless copyright-extending corporations.
Yes, some of us beat swords into plowshares, and others beat chicken poop into gold.
...
Running that material through a drier and then through Polifka's machine could produce a powder form of those poultry byproducts that could be sold as a flavoring or nutritious additive to pet foods or fertilizers, Winsness thought.
"The single most important quality of the tornado in a can is whatever goes into it comes out with its nutritional value," he said. "You can get four times the price of nonedible waste."
With the population growth being what it is and the cost of burial plots skyrocketing, how long before Soylent Green is a reality???
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
the real evil is not what people think - its how people think
From the patent:
;)
(b) a lower enclosure disposed below and in a tandem arrangement with said upper enclosure, said lower enclosure including a lower annular sidewall having a substantially inverted conical configuration and open upper and lower ends and defining a lower interior chamber, said lower annular sidewall of said lower enclosure being mounted at said open upper end thereof to said upper annular sidewall at said open lower end of said upper enclosure such that said lower annular sidewall and lower interior chamber of said lower enclosure are substantially continuous and in flow communication with said upper annular sidewall and upper interior chamber of said upper enclosure...
Ok, one, that's one sentence, and two, the word "said" appears there 11 times. I felt like I was listening to "Einstein on the beach" again.
But apart from that, it (and the rest of the patents) describes the thing, and it's not a tornado gun like most of y'all are hypothesizing. It's...well, it's basically a wind-powered coffee grinder - no blades, just wind. So you can forget about pointing it at someone and watching their molecules randomly rearrange themselves, k?
Triv
To get all over every side.
Thank you, I'll be here all week.
before reading the story, I was picturing chickens running away as their feet were pulverized by sadistic farmers with tornado guns. Glad to hear that's not the case!
Oh the power of google and the wayback machine combined!
Polifka's webpage for the Windhexe
Business Idea for the Tornado-in-a-can guy:
Does the thought of being burned like yesteryear's garbage after you die curl your toes?
With the new Tornadoom swirly treatment you can be pulverized into ashes without the messy, smoking, hellish addition of flame.
Remember the first time a bully flushed your head in the mens room in Jr. High? Well now you can go out in full geek colors. The Tornadoom is like a permanent swirly that lasts forever. Make your shame of the past an eternal badge of honor.
Reduce the cost of burial to your family. For only $12/hr in electrical costs, you can be ground into dry powder. You can then be used to fertalize the garden, be a pet-food additive, or achieve any one of several higher self-fulfilling goals.
When you go to your funeral director to plan for that ever-coming day of doom, ask for Tornadoom!
Things such as this are what the patent system was designed for. This is a legitimate 'new' device that performs a 'new' function that was previously unavailable - and it deserves a patent.
Of course, someone will hook it up to a computer and obtain a new patent for 'Method of using a tornado in a can with a computer'
Oh well, something may never change.
It does not matter what you do, it's wrong.
That's nothing. You should see my dad after a a coupla burritos. Talk about unholy destructive power...
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
First of all, vortex technology is quite respectable nowadays. As well as the Dyson cleaner, which gets more effective with each generation, there is the work on vortex particulate removers for Diesel engines and powder paint shops. The basic principle seems to be that the air is made to spiral down the vortex chamber in ever narrowing circles. As it does so, its angular velocity increases so that particulates experience an increasing force which carries them to the vortex walls.
Now, in a conventional vortex cleaner, you want non-turbulent flow to keep those particles going in the right direction. But what if the flow becomes turbulent? As it breaks up you would have small localised regions of extremely high turbulence in an environment of increasing angular momentum - so that instead of having a turbulent flow of air scrubbing a single surface, you could have lots of small turbulent flows in three dimensions. That sounds like a pretty effective way of abrading things with a soft medium that would do what is claimed.
So why does the Post talk about scientists being baffled? Well, as a 2c worth, perhaps it's because they have to talk up the story and perhaps it's because the journo didn't know the difference between a vortex chamber and a plate of gefulte fish and wanted to report that everybody else stood around looking stupid too. (In view of the Dow Jones case decision in Australia perhaps I should add this is just my personal opinion, wild speculations, journalists are all genius saviours of mankind etc.)
Perhaps the next Dyson cleaner will not just pick up the dust but act as a dry waste disposal unit as well. Or perhaps not.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
A great way for the Children of the Corn to dispose of the bodies!
blog |
And much of the 300 million tons of shells produced by laying hens each year is worked into the soil.
They could have left out the details...
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
A certain group of superfriends, no wait, superdudes, no wait, Mystery Men, have already used it against Cassanova Frankenstein. It seemed to work pretty damn well against him. Completely non-lethal. It was actually invented by Dr. Heller. I wonder if Dr. Heller has a patent on it, or if he's been too busy with "the ladies"...?
what exactly is a cone-shaped cylinder? is it related to the pyramid-shaped cube?
you probably shouldn't have read this.
Not effective on road-runners.
-- This void intentionally left null.
You mean chickenshit, don't you?
Sorry, blatantly stolen from Charleton Heston......
\/\/oobie
Sorry about that, here's a direct link to the site.
Big deal, you ain't seen destruction until you've seen one of our shop's daily tempests in a teapot.
Besides pulverizing concrete, it can pulverize small objects including jelly fish, and chicken feet without destroying the organic compounds. The chickens don't like it.
What, the jellyfish do??
I make these: http://beatseqr.com
And you wonder what they put in your food.. Oh boy! a powdered chicken head and feet milkshake! And it's nutritious too!
You know some guy down at the sewer treatment plant is saying "hey Larry.. I'll bet I could convince someone that its food.."
I think it's about time I start shopping at the farmer's market...
Ya know, a friend of mine died of Jakob-Kreutzfeld disease not too long ago.
It's supposed that he got it from eating beef contaminated by BSE, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, which is a prion disease spread through the industry practice of feeding butcher's waste to cattle.
Cannibalism is bad, people. Ref. Oliver Sach's description of diseases among the descendants of cannibals. It's an unhealthy feedback loop, that optimizes disease organisms.
So, the poultry farmers have already spread salmonella through the entire US chicken industry with their unsound practices, now they want to do it better, cheaper, faster.
So much for chicken soup as health food.
Want a ride in my uhm... Rocket Ship??!??!!! Only $12/hour!
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
What a great way to get rid of dead bodies!
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Hubby: Honey, will you pass the chicken feet flavored, pulverized jellyfish powder?
Wife: With or without egg membranes?
I just hope the dried meal they make from chicken parts isn't fed to other chickens (and hopefully they aren't doing the same with cows on the beef meal made - surely we learned that lesson - then again, look at everything else)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
This would be pretty scary if it could separate uranium isotopes.
Going from a ton of yellocake to a few grams of u235 is an EXPENSIVE, slow process.
Now if you could do it for 12$/hr, and without using all the export controlled machinery
Though not quite as brute-force as this chicken grinder, a German recycling conglomerat had a Tornado-in-a-House (22 meters high) at the EXPO 2000 in Hannover. Pictures are here or here.
I think this could be an extremely important invention. This might be a GREAT way to process recyclable materials, as well as other garbage. Imagine the day when the junk we've previously thrown into landfills is instead tossed into a giant version of these things, broken down into potentially reusable materials. Might be a better solution than just digging holes and burying the crap.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Tomado in a can?
I mean whats the big deal they sell tomados in a can at the grocery store!
hey, can I help it if I was raised in Oklahoma?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Obligatory Simpsons quote: "Mmmmmm... Pulverised chicken heads"
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Good luck to this guy with defending his patent. A cursory search found prior art here.
I'm thinking this thing would be a great replacement for the woodchipper..
It is quite simple
Haiku should not be funny
Try a Senryu
Put your old printed circuit boards in here and pulverize away! You could reclaim copper and gold EASILY from this contraption, and reduce the remainder to a fine powder. You could probably refine even that at a later point.
Think of it! Go down to the corner Tornado-in-a-can and feed it your old motherboard, monitor, TV, anything! Its a geek dream: pulverize something to tiny bits, recycle useable hardware, get some money back at the same time!
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy, and taste good with ketchup.
Things such as this are what the patent system was designed for. This is a legitimate 'new' device that performs a 'new' function that was previously unavailable - and it deserves a patent.
Yes, things like this (and the airplane, and numerous other inventsions) are exactly what the patent system was designed for, and by the rules set down the patent is completely legitimate.
Unfortunately, this technology will only be developed and improved by a small subset of those who could have improved and exploited it: namely the inventor(s) himself and those who chooses to license his patent to. A great deal of good science and engineering will be delayed by at least 20 years because of this patent, perhaps longer if patents on applications of the technology are granted (which often happens, and is how pharmaceutical companies often delay the release of generic drugs for even longer than the duration of their patents).
Even in the best case scenerio, where the patent system works exactly as designed, this new technology will be developed at a snail's pace until such a time as the patent expires and competing, unfettered interests can improve upon it. Of course, then that progress in turn will be brought back to a crawl once again, as patents on the improvements are granted, and so on, ad nauseum.
Unless of course we need the technology in a war, then the US Govt., desperate for improvements which can only be achieved through competition and free markets, will seize the patent and open it up to competing interests, just like they did Orval and Wilber Wright's patent on the airplane in World War I, and numerous other technologies since (eventually writing into law a nice loophole that excludes the government from adhering to patents altogether).
So yes, this inventor clearly deserves the patent and yes, the patent clearly stifles any further developments along that particular line of inquiry.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Most female chickens lay an egg per day. Usually those get collected and sold, but the fact is there are about 365 eggs produced per (female)chicken-year. Most chickens, also, are female - one rooster services lots of chickens.
If you take one adult chicken and kill her at the end of the year, you'll have 6 pounds of chicken and 23 pounds of eggshell. If you hatch some of those eggs, they will most likely not be killed by end-of-year because it's of more benefit for the farmer to get it to egg-laying (or fertilizing) age. So don't add that chicken's mass to the total. And you still have the eggshell to deal with!
Not that I really care, but I like using measurement units like eggs per chicken-year (that's product, not subtraction)
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Disposing of dead animals. Whole dead animals. Like your pet hamster or your mother-in-law. Hell, maybe not even dead ... maybe alive, screaming and kicking ... muhahahah!
How would that work? Of course, you'd have to have a big enough chamber, but that could be dealt with. And getting rid of the evidence wouldn't be too dificult either - just move it down to the river and dump the solids in there. Whoosh - perfect crime!
Right?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
...recycle useable hardware,...
I fail to see where *useable* hardware comes out of this....
...
"If all goes well, Polifka may someday end up rich, his name forever associated with an invention that puts a more pleasing face on some of the more unseemly byproducts of modern society."
Polifkalizer
Polifkalator
Polifkanado
I dunno, Zamboni seems to fit - this guy is gonna have trouble.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
Moreover, if they did do this, since the organic molecules are preserved, would a careful restoration of the liquid allow us to reconstitute the security council, as with the concrete mentioned above? What if the dust from the different members has become mixed?
I don't think that would work- if you were to reduce the UN Security Council to dust and try to reconstitute them with water, the results would be too thick to form a solution...
in Mystery Men.
It's the ultimate in non-lethal weaponry.
and the first thing that popped in my head was :
how long before darwinawards.com has a story about someone putting their penis in it?
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
Strange as it seems, I remember reading about a WWII German Aiti-Aircraft weapon that was strangely similar to this. Supposedly, it could generate vortecies powerful enough to make an aircraft uncontrollable in flight and in some cases break up. As I remember, it never had the range they wanted (tens, rather than thousands, of meters) and was never deployed operationally.
Looks like another 50-year-old technology has found a use doing something it wasn't originally designed for.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
...how long before they sue the maker for using "Win" in its name?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
A real honest-to-goodness can of whoop-ass! Cool!
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Loan Shark: You're gonna give me my money by the end of the week, see? Or me and the boys are gonna powder your nose!
Hapless Gambler: Hmmm... That doesn't sound so bad...
"The Boys":
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Don't lean in too far or you'll be on darwinawards.com!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I've been looking for something like this ever since the first time I threatened to open a can of "Whoop-Ass" on someone. This is great! Will they come in six-packs? Or can I just get these by the case?
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
If I put water in it, what happens?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I wonder if a corpse could fit in it?
Huh? Oh, no reason...
Finally, people may be able to back up the claim, "I'm gonna open a can of whoopass!"
The plasma torch has a better potential of destroying
/ ar ticle2.html
dangerous compounds and generating energy at the
same time.
It's really interesting stuff.
http://gtalumni.org/StayInformed/magazine/sum02
Absolute statements are never true
Dry it out, powder it, and bake the hell out of it. Once you remove the water it's a notably smaller mess to deal with.
But Holy Hell, the reek in that facility....
Carpe Deez
The Mafia and other organizations may be interested in this technology if it also obliterates DNA in the process. How good is this? (Or maybe if you mix with a chemical, it could do the job.) Nice tech! :0
Let's count on Amazon to patent the 'one-click' method.
"...cook the sewage first..."
Come on down, bring the family, we're having an old fashioned sewage cookoff!
Or, you can do the same thing with an actual, un-pulverized cookie.
...
Simply put, if it's broken down to the molecular level, a Prion will still get ya.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Step 1: Steal Underpants
Step 2: Pulverize underpants without destroying its organic compounds. Sell resulting powder to pharmecutical companies.
Step 3: Profit!
Think about it:
Our landfills contain metals, plastics, glass, and a whole bunch of organic material. There's no practical way of sifting through most of it.
With this device, Garbage Mining could be as simple as separating the organics from the inorganics smelting the metal out...
The poultry aspect of this thing, however, is enough to make anyone vegetarian.
"Though poultry officials are reluctant to speak publicly about the Windhexe for competitive reasons, ..."
Ah, they're just chickens!
Sounds like it might be a good way to get the metal out. Then you are just left with a pile of toxic dust that could be reprocessed chemically to recover the various elements.
science is a religion
To put one bag - much less 400 pounds - of Oreos in one bite would require more than Windhexe pulverization.
If you want to pursue this goal any further, I suggest looking into several of the world's larger particle accelerators.
So THAT's what the Super-Conduction Supercollider was for!
...