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Junkyard Wars Wants You!
Dan Messinger writes "Bring On The Junk! Junkyard Wars is looking for new contestants to compete on the 2003 series. Teams of contestants are given ten hours to build a machine to solve a specific challenge using parts they salvage from a junkyard. In contrast to previous seasons, this year we are looking for individual applicants who are skilled at putting together sophisticated machinery and not afraid of getting their hands dirty. Successful candidates will possess a strong background in engineering, fabrication and a good mechanical 'know how.' Junkyard Wars wants applications from people of all ages, races, creeds, colors, sexes, religions, and sexual orientations, as well as people with physical disabilities. We are especially interested in applications from women and/or people of color, as previous crops of contenders have been underrepresented among these groups. Lots of kids watch Junkyard Wars and we want to show them that anyone can grow up to be the world's greatest mechanic or engineer! If you think you match the description or you know of someone who does - please log onto our website and apply: you will find the application forms as well as all of the information that you need regarding applying. Application deadline is February 28, 2003."
I've been saying for years that we need more hispanic lesbians building robots on TV. Count me IN!
Sounds like fun, they have a diversity problem they want you to solve. Its amazing that this day in age we are still this worried about diversity, they probably got threatened by their network and/or the fcc. Anyways, I'm still going to apply, it's a good oppertunity.
... as previous crops of contenders have been underrepresented among these groups.
Those groups are "underrepresented" among engineers!
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
was Cathy rogers. Rrowr!
The other people caught on, and we need some new people to come in and clean up this junkyard.
Is is just me, or does anyone else find it strange that the teams always finish on time. Some editing tricks perhaps?
Don't you know the Slashdot audience?
Overweight all-talk do-nothing airchair warriors.
If you had some sort of porn watching or complaining challenge - then this would be the place.
How, exactly? Underrepresented relative to their proportions in the general population, or relative to their proportions with inclination/education in mechanical engineering? If the former, they are idiots. If the latter, good for them. Applying one set of demographic standards to another domain entiely is ridiculous.
and see them fail miserably because they wasted 6 hours arguing over whether to use the MIG/MAG or TIG welding torch, or spending all the time trying to get linux to boot on their handheld so they can run some simulation calculations....
"...and not afraid of getting their hands dirty..."
"...as well as people with physical disabilities..."
What about people with no hands?
Hands dirty? The poster does realize that this is slashdot, right?
Perhaps he ment to post that they were looking for someone to bitch on the sidelines in the upcoming season...
I've always thought about that myself. They've always 'got a long way to go' with 45 minutes left, and just finish the last nail at the buzzer. A little too Hollywood in the timing, and it's consistant with every team every time.
GL
If I can contact the legless mechanic and Tina Turner, I've got myself a team!
With the actual problem in Middle East (and possible consequences) maybe the next war will be really a Junkyard war.
..but wouldn't this be more suited for [H]ardOCP folk? Slashdot crowd's needs are different. Hear me out.
Create a gameshow called IT Storage Wars.
Premise: Nerds will be unleashed upon ridiculously aged hardware with a copy of putty.exe, 5 1/5 floppy disc, Linux distribution on a USB-pen, and a wrench to build enterprise-level application servers complete with clustering and a backend database.
I think this could be a winning combination.
This is probably going to become the first time in history that a snail-mail box is going to feel the wrath of the Slashdot Effect.
And yes, I'll be applying. Heh.
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This is a show that does some great engineering out of nothing. But their application process is to download a word document, fill it out, print it out and send it via snail mail to the studio.
Can't they come up with a better solution then this? At the very least make the application an interactive PDF and at most make it a Web Form.
But because they are using word they have to post an e-mail address stating that if you can not open word to e-mail someone about it.
Not very technically saavy they seem.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I hope he applies for it - this is the sort of thing he would love.
when he was a professor, his students hated him because he made them think (imagine that) and he frequently gave them assignments that were much like this show (the one I recall best was they were given a remote control car, assorted kitchen appliances, tin foil, wood, tennis balls, a 286, and some other stuff and were supposed to make a robot that would roam about a gym and retrieve various objects that were placed there. nobody completed the assignment and most didn't even try)
I told him about this show once and he was quite excited - had never seen it - I don't think he watches tv. he wanted me to tape it for him, which to me is like asking me to carve it out of stone for him - I don't even own a VCR.
Now I see that they sell VHS tapes of the show, so I guess now I know a present for him.
I agree with another poster on here that my fav part of the show was the cute brit host girl that is now on that show with Henry Rollins.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
There are basically two programmes:
Just to confuse things though, when Discovery Channel in Europe shows the programmes the use Scrapheap Challenge as the title regardless of which version the programme originally came from.
Both SHC and JW are filmed in the same place. Last series this was in the US. This series its moved back to the UK. As you say, "foreign" rubbish is imported if necessary to make people feel at home.
Am I the saddest man on
Those groups are "underrepresented" among engineers!
Yeah, tell me about it. In my engineering classes, out of about 300 students, we only had two gay guys. Two! And they were both in aerospace engineering.
It was really annoying, because anytime I needed fashion advice, I had to walk all the way to the arts buildings on the other end of campus and start asking random people in the hallways.
In my experience, there are only two kinds of people who can drink harder than engineers: mariners and gay people. I think it would be utterly terrifying to meet a gay marine engineer.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
please log onto our website
I tried, but I couldn't find the blank for my userid and password. Perhaps your site is broken.
See the Cathy Rogers interview, first question.
Obviously the show cheats enough as it is to magiclaly get this contraptions to work
The UK version (Scrapheap Challenge) doesn't always have working machines. In the last series a car tossing trebuchet collapsed in spectacular fashion on the first attempt to hurl a Mini through the air. It is also common to see teams sitting, in true British stereotype fashion, wth a cup of tea at the end of the building time, having finished half an hour early.
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
Tonight, on a very special episode of Junkyard Wars- Two guys in wheel chairs join the megalomaniacs. Can Nosher find the true beauty within them, or will he be untouched by their stoic perseverance at trying to drag a mini out of a pile of crap? Will he tear their wheelchairs apart to get the motors? Will they all cry together at the end?
Will this show suck?
Carpe Deez
people who like to post 'F1r5t p0t7 d00d! 1'm 1337!'
Then they'd have come to the right place.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
but that's the point, they don't even have to be wealthy. They are given half or full scholarships and treated like royalty by the school because the ratio is 40 to 1, and I could see it being societal if the were just dropping out, but the fact is that they just don't drop out, they drop because their failing out. Girls I know pick schools by locations and how much fun they're going to have there, guys that want to be engineers, just look at the school, and its curiculum I went to school in Flint Michigan when I went to Kettering. No parties really, dreary weather, shitty town. And girls left, I stayed, so after I went through 5 years of B.S. hell and 4 years of grad hell. This is my pay back, my cushy office in my own consulting company. And now the city is pushing for my company to be more diverse. It's pissing me off. It's a free country and I will hire the best person for the job, not the mediocre person that fills out my quota system
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Ever worked on a project with a deadline? Notice how more work always gets done right at the end, no matter what you do? Specification, design, etc. at the beginning seem to take a long time while getting nothing done but implementation goes quickly near the end. Testing -- what testing?
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
But in Soviet Russia...
You want Junkyard Wa....
Never mind.
Plywood Guy is an "exercise in the magic power of plywood and drywall screws. He crouches! He stands! He stores potential energy!"
tone
tone
And on the diversity front; yes, engineers as a group are a lot more white and male than the population and even many other professions, but that doesn't mean we don't value diversity. We just don't have much time for a 'token' anything. I hope they can find a couple of competent participants that are not white males to spice up their show, but it will flop if these people don't add something to the teams they are on.
The question I have is whether participants are paid. I would volunteer in a heartbeat if they made it worth my while, but I don't have time to just contribute my valuable time to their money making operation. I also think the concept could be a lot cooler if it wasn't so much of a race as a true engineering competition. You could still factor in time as a bonus for shorter time taken, but rushing through things rarely makes for good engineering.
You could also downplay the 'wars' part of it and mix in some footage of a wide variety of wild and weird engineering feets, projects and competitions. Highlights of the 2.70 contest from MIT would always be good for a side story. For those who don't know the reference, '2.70' is the course number for a mechnical engineering design course that features a design competition where you get a box of parts and a goal, and teams just go at it. It has been featured on some programs in the past (Scientific American is one such program AFIAK). Just a thought.
Contestants must take code snipets from Real M$ applications and make some thing that REALLY functions and DOES what they planned it to do, and it won't cost a fortune to build, and can be done in a matter of 10 hours.
From the application:
"Unlike previous seasons, competitors will be chosen this year as individuals, not as complete teams." (Their emphasis, not mine)
I think I liked the team concept better.
The show is called Full Metal Challenge.
The premise is basically that a couple dozen teams from around the world (there were teams from Argentina, Germany, China, Chile...) get $3000 and 30 days to build a do-anything vehicle. Then they're all shipped to a decomissioned nuclear power plant where they compete in different games, including steep hill climbs, swamp racing, a 'roller coaster' with see-saw platforms and steeply banked turns, bowling, and something loosely based on soccer (football).
Each episode has 3 teams competing against each other, and the two teams with the highest number of points at the end of the episode get to Sumo wrestle each other with the ground covered in tires, soapy water, barb wire, and caltrops.
The winner of the first season was a British beast of a machine with 8 wheels and two engines. They beat out a Quebec team with a good tracked design (they nearly got second place in the soccer game with a thrown track!), which seemed to have mechanical problems in the final Sumo match.
It's not as good as Junkyard Wars, but with what they learned in the first season, any second season should be better.
I nominate Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson because they both have very extensive experience in fabrication.
During lunch I'm going to run out in the shop and ask all the black welders and machinist if they're gay.....
I fear for the future of the world now. I realise this is just for a tv show, but you must understand it's happening everywhere now. Colleges being the worse, right now my wife and I are trying to get pregnant, and I am praying for a daughter, because I fear the world a white male from America would face, he would be passed over on scholarships for people with lower scores than him, passed over on jobs for people with less schooling or experience, all because he is a white male. Why is this fair, prejudice is prejudice, no matter how you do it. If you prejudice in favor of one group, it is still just that. I want to raise my children in a world blind to color and gender, instead of a world that hates them for coming from an upper class family and being of the majority.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
I want to see Dr. Hawking open a jammed car door with a pickaxe.
There do exist some disabilities which preclude some people from doing some activities. For instance, I am not well suited to bearing children, since I'm male.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
- Great host(s)
- Fantastic machine builds
- Interesting team characters
- Wonderful sense of sportsmanship, that it was all in fun
- Fair play
We had these things in seasons 1-4 and to some degree in season 6 (all British imports of the renamed "Scrapheap Challenge" with Robert). But in seasons 5 and 7, each of these things have been lost.1. THE HOSTS: In the old says we had Robert Lewellyn, who was perfect. He was funny, had clever insights, and joked around with the teams. Who can forget his impersonation of a V8 engine? The show brought Cathy onscreen as a foil for him, and that worked out fine too -- they played well off each other. Then we got George Gray. Who was about 50% as fun and interesting as Robert (but still acceptable). Now they've hit rock-bottom with Tyler, who offers no ad-lib humour, no insights, nothing -- all he does is yell -- and a generic hollywood talking head chick who doesn't even have as much personality as Tyler.
2. MACHINE BUILDS: There was a time when it mattered if your machine worked or not, and if you really tried. Teams came up with brilliant designs, and there were failures, but they had to work at least a LITTLE. And teams did things that were ambitious. On one of the old British shows, a team actually built a demolition machine with a hydraulic claw. And it WORKED! Yes, they eventually had some hydraulic problems and their radiator sprung a leak, but when have we seen anything that great in the last three seasons? Nowadays we have things like "Mega Wars", where teams get two days to build an all-terrain amphibious vehicle, and in those two days, two of the teams manage to do nothing more than strip down an existing truck and hook some empty drums on for flotation in the water part of the challenge. Or we get challenges like the Hydrofoil, where the competition is a boat that can't hydrofoil vs. a boat that can't move at all. It's a disgrace.
3. TEAM CHARACTERS: The Bodgers, The Long Brothers, The Techno Teachers, even the original Orange and Yellow teams were full of interesting, likeable characters. We all loved Anne, Nosher, Dick, and the rest of the old crews. We cared about them and rooted for them.
In contrast, the teams that won the last two US seasons have had one thing in common: they're both comprised of obnoxious, cursing, unlikable jerks with no personalities. Our only hope in watching their progress through the season was that they'd lose and we wouldn't have to see them again.
Let's face it: when we're against the teams, we're against the show.
4. SPORTSMANSHIP: In the old days teams would trade with each other if they needed something. Nowadays they just steal it. Back then, teams joked around and had a good time. Our kids could watch the show and learn how to be a good sport, that there was such a thing as friendly competition, that winning wasn't everything. Now the teams mock each other's failures, openly berate the experts who try to help them, jump on each other's stolen stuff and are all-around poor sports. We can't let our kids watch the show anymore. It sends them the wrong message.
5. FAIR PLAY: I don't think it's news to anyone that season 7's team won by cheating. Twice. And the last US season was "won" by a big cheat-off in the demolition final where both teams just ran their trucks into the walls because neither of them could make even their basic machines work. What a disappointment.
What can JW do now?
If you ask me, it's a simple matter to address these five issues.
1. HOSTS: Put Robert and Cathy together again. Period.
2. BUILDS: Talk to your experts before challenges. Make sure they have interesting ideas to present. Talk to your teams. Make sure everyone knows that their machines need to work. Do more creative editing if necessary. Find more good challenges. Ice racers, with 4-wheel drive, 4-wheel steering and homemade studded tires? Pipe sleds that need to travel inside big pipes and be invertable, with wheels top and bottom? Pole climbing machines? OK, my ideas aren't all gems, but that's 2 minutes' work off the top of my head. I'll bet Cathy & co. can do a lot better than I can -- or than what we've been getting lately.
3. CHARACTERS: Rather than making everyone on the team required to be a welder, pick teams that are going to be fun to watch and who demonstrate some imagination. If necessary, bring back teams from previous seasons. Why not? We liked them before. We'd like to see them again. Particularly some of the early teams, whom new viewers might have never seen at all.
4. SPORTSMANSHIP: This springs from #3, but is something you can enforce too.
5. FAIR PLAY: Make the rules clear and stick to them.
Making these changes would cost the show almost nothing, and would in my opinion save the show. Longtime fans would be thrilled to see a new golden age of JW, and new fans would be won over.
An Army recruiter, calling to tell my parents my score on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test (I took it in high school to get out of class): "Your son has some of the highest scores I've seen. Except....on the 'mechanics' section."
My dad: "What'd he get?"
Recruiter: "A 15. You know, sir, the average 11th grade girl scores a 45."
My dad: "That's higher than I would have thought he'd score."
..Klingon, you insensitive clod!
Alright, I will admit that engineering/scientific girls are in the minority, but I really hope you don't feel that none of them are capable of doing what guys can. Because just looking at my family should be enough to prove that wrong
Every single person in my family has programmed at some point in their lifetime. That's one son and three daughters, by the way. My brother didn't much care for it, and hasn't continued with it. One sister only programmed COBOL, so that doesn't count for much. One of my sisters aced almost every class she ever took (at Michigan Tech) and is now a perfectly capable professor of mechanical engineering who is researching carbon nanotubes, and would be a shoe-in for this if she had the time.
And then you have me. Yes, I am female. Yes, I can code, and do so as a profession. In high school, I scored in the top percentile of mechanically inclined people in the USA on tests. I did quite well in most of my science and CS classes in college. I'm not trying to brag. Just saying that I am not a socialite who went to college for fun. I didn't intend on making any friends in college. I wanted to learn.
So, while I do acknowledge that I am one of very few, please do not discount scientific-minded females as a whole. It gets very tiresome to be told I can't think in a certain way just because I am female.
I for one, am a person of color, and it would be nice to occaisionally see someone on there who is not pasty white.
So you'd like people to be put on the show based on the color of their skin? And you don't think that devalues people of color? I mean, really: Do you want to be on the show because you've earned and deserve it, or do you want them just handing it over to you because your skin is the right shade of grey?
If you have the skills and abilities to get put on this show, then get there based on those skills instead of pulling out the race card.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig