The thing that people forget about human and animal limbs is that they are controled on a VERY fine scale. There are thousands of motor units in any muscle. There are forces other than muscular ones working on the joints too, such as hydraulic and spring forces.
Computation for muscle movement is HIGHLY distributed, begining with the cells and moving on up from there.
The nice thing about this spherical motor is that it simplifies the computation required to move the limb. Torque and locking can be addressed by using electromagnets on the inside ball as well as the socket (doesn't do 100% sperical movement, but you only need that for a wheel application), keep the ball large compared to the length of the lever attached to it, and use a friction collar to lock the ball in one place on command.
Whiplike tentacle can be made with sections. Sections include a ball at one end and a socket with friction brake at the other. Control electronics in each section track a reference on the ball and report back to a central processor, giving joint angle for each section. power and com lines run down the center of each section, just like the human hip joint.
Now all we need is a job for the tentacle to do, right?
Just on the off chance that this is not a troll mis-moderated, and that in fact you are merely INCREDIBLY ignorant, I've got a news flash for you:
Almost all drugs affect the immune system one way or another. ASPRIN affects the immune system.
What these guys have done is isolate the chemical which moderates the inflamation response. If you can interrupt inflamation you can basically stop things like arthritis, ecsema, asthma, etc.
This is a GOOD THING, not a danger to humanity.
Ah, the beautiful power of the V8 hemi, now even better with computer controled fuel injection and timing. Forget the Linux powered "infotainment center" (do marketing types actually learn to speak English anymore?)I wanna hack that engine control unit. Put a blower on that thing and look out, here comes 600 horses!
Unfortunatly, it does NOT run Linux, but is instead some bizzare proprietary real time system running on equally bizzare glassware. Bummer.
Now, a true Linux/gearhead would be tempted to hack together an engine control unit with RT Linux running on a suitable chip, something rock solid with low overhead and no physical maintenance.
From reading the article, I tend to agree with the author's contention that the pace of innovation has been slower since 1950. However, I think this has much more to do with the relative difficulty of the problems we face than any "dissipation" of the spirit or intellect of modern culture.
Let us take a few of the examples in the article, starting with the Concorde. Sustained supersonic flight is a very difficult problem requiring exotic and expensive materials, fuels and aerodynamics. The Concorde is a 25 year old hotrod, and was never an economic success. Designed in the early '60s, the all titanium SR-71 Black Bird costs a million plus dollars per mission to fly, and remains the fastest thing on Earth to this day. Speeds above mach 3 require the development of even more amazing materials. CHEAP hypersonic flight (as in non-military, commercial flight) is much more difficult still. These problems are more difficult in principle than those faced by the Wright brothers.
The development of antibiotics was a huge breakthrough in medicine, as was the invention of modern anesthetics. The microbe has largely been defeated for the moment. Major medical problems that face us now are viruses like HIV, prions (e.g.. Mad Cow disease), fungi, and things like asthma, Alzheimer's etc. These diseases operate on a much smaller, subtler and more fundamental level, and require a qualitatively different knowledge of biology than did Smallpox.
Living and working on the Moon permanently is a different proposition than sending three men there for a few days. One can compare this to the difference between a polar expedition and an oil rig in the Arctic ocean. There is nothing on the Moon right now that justifies the effort.
Modern technology and modern convenieces are unavailable to the majority of humanity not primarily due to politics,but because they are expensive. "Power too cheap to meter" is the concept we are presently in search of. Maybe hydrogen fusion and room temperature superconductors can make this a reality.
These problems are fundamentally more difficult than the major inventions and discoveries of which the author speaks, and can only be accomplished using the technology we now have as a starting point.
So there you go. The problems facing us today are of a fundamentally different quality than the ones already solved in this century, particularly up to 1950. Just as the explosion of technology in the first half of the Twentieth Century depended on advances made during the last half of the Nineteenth, I think we have been building the tools for the explosion of the next 50 to 100 years. Computers and the Internet may not change the human condition as much as the electric light, but I bet they make possible the research that creates the next major breakthrough.
Actually we DO have the right to bear arms in Canada, under British Common Law. You have unfortunately been brainwashed out of your rights dude.
Incidentally, you are most likely going to be paying tax on your Internet useage too, since the damn Liberals won yesterday. They tax anything that moves, the Net will be next.
What really big consumer of electrical engineering has been taking a shit kicking the last 8 years?
Aerospace! Why?
Cold War is OVER! No cold war, no big missile/aircraft/bomb/spacecraft research going on, plus no FUTURE in private industry. Wild Bill Clinton and his assault on the military was just the icing on the cake.
Hence attention turns to growth industry, HEALTHCARE. Boomers are getting older and fatter, and they have money to pay for fitness trainers, Physical Therapy, etc.
People are no dumber than they ever were, they just go where the money is. You uber geeks in industry want electrical engineers, PAY 'EM!
So the solution is for OSHA to come in an potentially bankrupt half the start-ups in the country?
Be serious. OSHA has been trying to regulate this stuff for ever. The current regulations as published will do NOTHING for your RSI situation. This is not about keeping engineers healthy.
This IS about the unchecked expansion of government into the private sector. This means you cannot have an office of more than about 10 people without an OSHA certification. Think about it: a federal government licence to run an OFFICE? You want a blood sample to go with that Comrade?
"I'm really interested in seeing exactly how requiring manual laborers to use lumbar-support belts constitutes unsound science."
Are you now? As it happens, there is no conclusive evidence that demonstrates the efficacy of lumbar supports. There is in fact no generaly agreed upon model that explains the mechanism of back injury, never mind carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, frozen shoulders, and a host of other musculoskeletal ailments.
Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that prolonged use of support belts allows the abdominal and other postural muscles to weaken, which them increases the likelyhood of an injury when the worker is NOT wearing the belt. At home, when he is not covered by workmen's comp for example.
The OSHA regulations are a bunch of politically chosen hogwash based on largely disproved theory from the 1950's.
How do I know? I'm a physical therapist. I get paid to know. I also know that if you put 10 therapists in a room with a back injury patient, you will get at least 5 different treatment plans, based on 5 different theories of back injury. The patients usually get better faster than if we left them alone, but not because we understand the spine.
Basically what you have here is a mandate from the federal government for YOU and your company to pay ME $80 to $150 PER HOUR to ensure that your workplace is in compliance with regulations. It will have NO EFFECT on the rates of workplace injury.
PTs, OTs and funiture manufacturers are going to make a shit load of money. Then spend it on inflation and taxes to pay for all the new government office furniture.
I've seen this same logic applied to the human spine. We shouldn't be able to do half the stuff we can, given these basic mechanics. For example, your lumbar vertebrae should shatter if you sit down in a chair too suddenly.
In fact this does happen in elderly women with advanced osteoporosis, but not to healthy adults.
Like I said, if the dinosaurs did not regularly lift their heads, the joints would be calcified to show it.
The skeleton is not a well understood organ system, particularly from a load bearing standpoint. Further research may reveal more of the load bearing mechanism, but I'm not holding my breath. The problem is complex.
Apart from any speculation regarding soft tissue that we don't have, there is the principle of skeletal remodeling.
The skeletons of animals CHANGE in response to load stress and range of motion. If a dinosaur never lifted it's head due to brain blood supply, the spinal column would remodel to reflect this. Adult specimens would have obvious calcifications of the intervertebral joints which would PREVENT vertical movement above a certain point.
The absence of these structures does not PROVE the long necked dinosaurs commonly held their heads up, but it does indicate that they could.
Given the skeletal evidence for vertical movement of the neck, plus the existence of a long neck in the first place, there are a number of mechanisms that could help blood flow. Muscular pumping is one obvious one. It is a little know fact that the calf muscles of humans do most of the work returning blood from the legs to the heart. This is why hospital patients resting in bed get blood clots in their legs. Giraffes have similar muscular pump structures in their necks to help flow.
If the dinosaurs in question spent a great deal of time in the water as has been suggested, the demands on the heart would be decreased as well due to external water pressure supporting the vascular system. On the other hand breathing would require more effort for the same reason, so what you gain on the swings you lose on the roundabouts.
The important thing to remember is that blood supply depends on a lot more than the heart and arteries. The bones are what we have in hand, and the bones allow vertical movement of the head.
I'm a physical therapist. Most of my patients are office workers. The modern office has been designed to take almost all motion out of work. This is insanity. People are designed to run around all day, not sit motionless in front of a CRT.
My solution to the problem? For a healthy young person it is no desk, no chair. Put your PC on the floor. When you can't sit there any more, GET UP and go do something else. If you are sitting like a spud playing Q3 for ten hours at a stretch, it is going to screw you up BAD eventually. We are talking tendonitis, frozen shoulders, carpal tunnel, back pain, SI joint pain, you name it.
You're a programer, you HAVE to code for long periods? Have a monitor where you sit on the floor and one where you stand. Switch when you get tired.
How do I know? I'm a physical therapist, I fix dumbshit programmers for a living.
Fuck the chair, get up and walk around every 10 to fifteen minutes. Better yet, sit on the floor. Discomfort is nature's way of telling you to move your ass. Pain is her way of saying you screwed up bigtime.
Ah yes, the astoundingly destructive highschool years. From the vast distance of age 44 I have noticed two things.
First, it is easier to ride the horse in the direction he is going. Meaning, if you are in a school where the computer geeks all wear a certain kind of shirt, and they get beat up regularly, DON'T WEAR THAT SHIRT. Prejudice is like gravity. It is allways present, and it will bust your ass if you give it a chance. Be a geek if you want to, just don't advertise. Be a stealthgeek.:)
Second, highschool is not the most efficient grinder of the human spirit available. If you want to see REAL carnage, go work for a large corp or any hospital. There is money involved there.
You know all those idiot girl cheerleaders? The ones who flunked all the science courses? They grow up to be nurses and run hospitals. If you know more than they do, are more competent than they are and look better too, you are screwed. They will pull you down like hyenas and feast on your liver. Even doctors get chewed up and spit out if they don't fit the hospital mold.
These things do not change. Therefore the best and brightest among you had better count on being self employed and working like hell for what you want. Do that and you will get it. I did.
As for Columbine and the aftermath thereof, the thing to remember is that a lot of politics was at the root of the Columbine media coverage. You had the whole video feeding frenzy, then there was the gun control angle, the violent computer game angle, and the "out of control teen violence" angle. Not content with this feast, the media made up the whole geek/loner/trenchcoat angle from whole cloth.
Basically you had a bunch of guys falling all over themselves to make money off two insane people who wanted to be on TV. Disgusting, but no more disgusting than superannuated cheeleaders giving pointless treatments to half dead old men so they can charge for it. This stuff happens when money gets involved.
The Solution? Do what you want, don't advertise that YOU are DIFFERENT, and make 'em pay through the nose for what you do. Then you will have riches, respect and a lower than average hassle quotient.
THEN you will have children, if you are lucky, and the adventure will REALLY begin. This is the reward part, where the actual fun is. Screw Quake, kids are the best!
What idiot moderated this fool up to a 3? Third degree burn in 7 minutes from the sun? Do you even know what a 3rd degree burn IS? Give us a break!
Crawl back under your rock, you Greenie!
You state regarding gun owners: "They clearly fail to realize that they have mis-interpreted the meaning of the 2nd Amendment, using it in such a way as to satisfy their child like need to own a lethal firearm. They choose to ignore the overwhelming statistics that show that gun related accidents, including those that resulted in death, are exponentially higher in the United States of America, than in countries with sensible gun control policies. They choose to ignore that their rights do not extend to gun ownership."... "These people are the enemies of the United States of America, just as much as the Judges and Corporations who bend and twist the Constitution to fit their own needs."
While your assertions regarding the Second Amendment mirror those of the Clinton/Gore administration, they are disproved by a cursory examination of the historical record which others in this thread have already done.
The fact is that there are fewer gun accidents now than ever in history. It may interest you to know that the statistics to which you refer are for the most part propaganda printed in the medical journals, specifically New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association. I call these studies propaganda because they do not meet basic scientific requirements regarding sample selection, statistical analysis, conclusions being supported by data, proper data collection, etc. In short, they are bilge, printed for political purposes. An exhaustive scientific examination of these studies can be found at my web site, http://www.psn.net/~thephantom/ You may find it enlightening.
It may also interest you to know that Britain and Australia have experienced double digit increases in burglary, assault and other violent crimes since implementing the "sensible" gun control policies you refer to, including large increases in crimes committed with guns. On the other hand, states in the USA which have recently adopted "shall issue" concealed carry permit laws like those in Florida, Texas, Arizona etc. have seen double digit decreases in crime rates. Reputable studies have concluded that increasing gun ownership and concealed carry are correlated with decreased violent crime. A quick web search on Kleck, Lott, Mauser or others will turn up plenty of well documented evidence, as I don't expect you to take my word for it.
Kindly check your facts sir before slandering half the adult population. The "Enemies of America" are not the 40 million "child like" gun owners who assert their right to self defense.
I have an off road race car that weighs less than this airmobile, and it handles rather nicely at highway speeds in any kind of wind on or off road. Of course, it has most of it's weight made up in frame, engine and tires and looks pretty much like a bullet with wheels. Handling depends on aerodynamics and suspension, not mass.
The hideous composite tub pictured in the article will handle like a pig on skates, and if they are telling the truth about the engine it will never reach highway speed unless it is being towed.
The usual objections apply to this airmobile: Low energy density, short range, VERY poor crash survivability (4500 psi = bomb), butt-ugly design, increased dependence on electricity generation etc.
Do the planet a favor and get yourself a late model car with computer engine management and a high performance catalytic converter. Less pollution than a coal fired electric plant powering a fleet of these weinermobiles, that's for sure.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing that people forget about human and animal limbs is that they are controled on a VERY fine scale. There are thousands of motor units in any muscle. There are forces other than muscular ones working on the joints too, such as hydraulic and spring forces.
Computation for muscle movement is HIGHLY distributed, begining with the cells and moving on up from there.
The nice thing about this spherical motor is that it simplifies the computation required to move the limb. Torque and locking can be addressed by using electromagnets on the inside ball as well as the socket (doesn't do 100% sperical movement, but you only need that for a wheel application), keep the ball large compared to the length of the lever attached to it, and use a friction collar to lock the ball in one place on command.
Whiplike tentacle can be made with sections. Sections include a ball at one end and a socket with friction brake at the other. Control electronics in each section track a reference on the ball and report back to a central processor, giving joint angle for each section. power and com lines run down the center of each section, just like the human hip joint.
Now all we need is a job for the tentacle to do, right?
This is fun stuff, eh?
Just on the off chance that this is not a troll mis-moderated, and that in fact you are merely INCREDIBLY ignorant, I've got a news flash for you:
Almost all drugs affect the immune system one way or another. ASPRIN affects the immune system.
What these guys have done is isolate the chemical which moderates the inflamation response. If you can interrupt inflamation you can basically stop things like arthritis, ecsema, asthma, etc.
This is a GOOD THING, not a danger to humanity.
Get it? Health good, disease bad. Moron!
Ah, the beautiful power of the V8 hemi, now even better with computer controled fuel injection and timing. Forget the Linux powered "infotainment center" (do marketing types actually learn to speak English anymore?)I wanna hack that engine control unit. Put a blower on that thing and look out, here comes 600 horses!
Unfortunatly, it does NOT run Linux, but is instead some bizzare proprietary real time system running on equally bizzare glassware. Bummer.
Now, a true Linux/gearhead would be tempted to hack together an engine control unit with RT Linux running on a suitable chip, something rock solid with low overhead and no physical maintenance.
Any ideas?
The Phantom
From reading the article, I tend to agree with the author's contention that the pace of innovation has been slower since 1950. However, I think this has much more to do with the relative difficulty of the problems we face than any "dissipation" of the spirit or intellect of modern culture.
Let us take a few of the examples in the article, starting with the Concorde. Sustained supersonic flight is a very difficult problem requiring exotic and expensive materials, fuels and aerodynamics. The Concorde is a 25 year old hotrod, and was never an economic success. Designed in the early '60s, the all titanium SR-71 Black Bird costs a million plus dollars per mission to fly, and remains the fastest thing on Earth to this day. Speeds above mach 3 require the development of even more amazing materials. CHEAP hypersonic flight (as in non-military, commercial flight) is much more difficult still. These problems are more difficult in principle than those faced by the Wright brothers.
The development of antibiotics was a huge breakthrough in medicine, as was the invention of modern anesthetics. The microbe has largely been defeated for the moment. Major medical problems that face us now are viruses like HIV, prions (e.g.. Mad Cow disease), fungi, and things like asthma, Alzheimer's etc. These diseases operate on a much smaller, subtler and more fundamental level, and require a qualitatively different knowledge of biology than did Smallpox.
Living and working on the Moon permanently is a different proposition than sending three men there for a few days. One can compare this to the difference between a polar expedition and an oil rig in the Arctic ocean. There is nothing on the Moon right now that justifies the effort.
Modern technology and modern convenieces are unavailable to the majority of humanity not primarily due to politics,but because they are expensive. "Power too cheap to meter" is the concept we are presently in search of. Maybe hydrogen fusion and room temperature superconductors can make this a reality.
These problems are fundamentally more difficult than the major inventions and discoveries of which the author speaks, and can only be accomplished using the technology we now have as a starting point.
So there you go. The problems facing us today are of a fundamentally different quality than the ones already solved in this century, particularly up to 1950. Just as the explosion of technology in the first half of the Twentieth Century depended on advances made during the last half of the Nineteenth, I think we have been building the tools for the explosion of the next 50 to 100 years. Computers and the Internet may not change the human condition as much as the electric light, but I bet they make possible the research that creates the next major breakthrough.
The Phantom
Actually we DO have the right to bear arms in Canada, under British Common Law. You have unfortunately been brainwashed out of your rights dude.
Incidentally, you are most likely going to be paying tax on your Internet useage too, since the damn Liberals won yesterday. They tax anything that moves, the Net will be next.
The Phantom
What really big consumer of electrical engineering has been taking a shit kicking the last 8 years?
Aerospace! Why?
Cold War is OVER! No cold war, no big missile/aircraft/bomb/spacecraft research going on, plus no FUTURE in private industry. Wild Bill Clinton and his assault on the military was just the icing on the cake.
Hence attention turns to growth industry, HEALTHCARE. Boomers are getting older and fatter, and they have money to pay for fitness trainers, Physical Therapy, etc.
People are no dumber than they ever were, they just go where the money is. You uber geeks in industry want electrical engineers, PAY 'EM!
The Phantom
So the solution is for OSHA to come in an potentially bankrupt half the start-ups in the country?
Be serious. OSHA has been trying to regulate this stuff for ever. The current regulations as published will do NOTHING for your RSI situation. This is not about keeping engineers healthy.
This IS about the unchecked expansion of government into the private sector. This means you cannot have an office of more than about 10 people without an OSHA certification. Think about it: a federal government licence to run an OFFICE? You want a blood sample to go with that Comrade?
The Phantom Therapist
"I'm really interested in seeing exactly how requiring manual laborers to use lumbar-support belts constitutes unsound science."
Are you now? As it happens, there is no conclusive evidence that demonstrates the efficacy of lumbar supports. There is in fact no generaly agreed upon model that explains the mechanism of back injury, never mind carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, frozen shoulders, and a host of other musculoskeletal ailments.
Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that prolonged use of support belts allows the abdominal and other postural muscles to weaken, which them increases the likelyhood of an injury when the worker is NOT wearing the belt. At home, when he is not covered by workmen's comp for example.
The OSHA regulations are a bunch of politically chosen hogwash based on largely disproved theory from the 1950's.
How do I know? I'm a physical therapist. I get paid to know. I also know that if you put 10 therapists in a room with a back injury patient, you will get at least 5 different treatment plans, based on 5 different theories of back injury. The patients usually get better faster than if we left them alone, but not because we understand the spine.
Basically what you have here is a mandate from the federal government for YOU and your company to pay ME $80 to $150 PER HOUR to ensure that your workplace is in compliance with regulations. It will have NO EFFECT on the rates of workplace injury.
PTs, OTs and funiture manufacturers are going to make a shit load of money. Then spend it on inflation and taxes to pay for all the new government office furniture.
The Phantom Therapist
I've seen this same logic applied to the human spine. We shouldn't be able to do half the stuff we can, given these basic mechanics. For example, your lumbar vertebrae should shatter if you sit down in a chair too suddenly.
In fact this does happen in elderly women with advanced osteoporosis, but not to healthy adults.
Like I said, if the dinosaurs did not regularly lift their heads, the joints would be calcified to show it.
The skeleton is not a well understood organ system, particularly from a load bearing standpoint. Further research may reveal more of the load bearing mechanism, but I'm not holding my breath. The problem is complex.
The Phantom
Apart from any speculation regarding soft tissue that we don't have, there is the principle of skeletal remodeling.
The skeletons of animals CHANGE in response to load stress and range of motion. If a dinosaur never lifted it's head due to brain blood supply, the spinal column would remodel to reflect this. Adult specimens would have obvious calcifications of the intervertebral joints which would PREVENT vertical movement above a certain point.
The absence of these structures does not PROVE the long necked dinosaurs commonly held their heads up, but it does indicate that they could.
Given the skeletal evidence for vertical movement of the neck, plus the existence of a long neck in the first place, there are a number of mechanisms that could help blood flow. Muscular pumping is one obvious one. It is a little know fact that the calf muscles of humans do most of the work returning blood from the legs to the heart. This is why hospital patients resting in bed get blood clots in their legs. Giraffes have similar muscular pump structures in their necks to help flow.
If the dinosaurs in question spent a great deal of time in the water as has been suggested, the demands on the heart would be decreased as well due to external water pressure supporting the vascular system. On the other hand breathing would require more effort for the same reason, so what you gain on the swings you lose on the roundabouts.
The important thing to remember is that blood supply depends on a lot more than the heart and arteries. The bones are what we have in hand, and the bones allow vertical movement of the head.
The Phantom
HELL YES!!!
I'm a physical therapist. Most of my patients are office workers. The modern office has been designed to take almost all motion out of work. This is insanity. People are designed to run around all day, not sit motionless in front of a CRT.
My solution to the problem? For a healthy young person it is no desk, no chair. Put your PC on the floor. When you can't sit there any more, GET UP and go do something else. If you are sitting like a spud playing Q3 for ten hours at a stretch, it is going to screw you up BAD eventually. We are talking tendonitis, frozen shoulders, carpal tunnel, back pain, SI joint pain, you name it.
You're a programer, you HAVE to code for long periods? Have a monitor where you sit on the floor and one where you stand. Switch when you get tired.
The Phantom Therapist
The answer is A, SITTING ON YOUR ASS, Regis.
How do I know? I'm a physical therapist, I fix dumbshit programmers for a living.
Fuck the chair, get up and walk around every 10 to fifteen minutes. Better yet, sit on the floor. Discomfort is nature's way of telling you to move your ass. Pain is her way of saying you screwed up bigtime.
Ah yes, the astoundingly destructive highschool years. From the vast distance of age 44 I have noticed two things.
:)
First, it is easier to ride the horse in the direction he is going. Meaning, if you are in a school where the computer geeks all wear a certain kind of shirt, and they get beat up regularly, DON'T WEAR THAT SHIRT. Prejudice is like gravity. It is allways present, and it will bust your ass if you give it a chance. Be a geek if you want to, just don't advertise. Be a stealthgeek.
Second, highschool is not the most efficient grinder of the human spirit available. If you want to see REAL carnage, go work for a large corp or any hospital. There is money involved there.
You know all those idiot girl cheerleaders? The ones who flunked all the science courses? They grow up to be nurses and run hospitals. If you know more than they do, are more competent than they are and look better too, you are screwed. They will pull you down like hyenas and feast on your liver. Even doctors get chewed up and spit out if they don't fit the hospital mold.
These things do not change. Therefore the best and brightest among you had better count on being self employed and working like hell for what you want. Do that and you will get it. I did.
As for Columbine and the aftermath thereof, the thing to remember is that a lot of politics was at the root of the Columbine media coverage. You had the whole video feeding frenzy, then there was the gun control angle, the violent computer game angle, and the "out of control teen violence" angle. Not content with this feast, the media made up the whole geek/loner/trenchcoat angle from whole cloth.
Basically you had a bunch of guys falling all over themselves to make money off two insane people who wanted to be on TV. Disgusting, but no more disgusting than superannuated cheeleaders giving pointless treatments to half dead old men so they can charge for it. This stuff happens when money gets involved.
The Solution? Do what you want, don't advertise that YOU are DIFFERENT, and make 'em pay through the nose for what you do. Then you will have riches, respect and a lower than average hassle quotient.
THEN you will have children, if you are lucky, and the adventure will REALLY begin. This is the reward part, where the actual fun is. Screw Quake, kids are the best!
The Phantom
What idiot moderated this fool up to a 3? Third degree burn in 7 minutes from the sun? Do you even know what a 3rd degree burn IS? Give us a break! Crawl back under your rock, you Greenie!
Greetings Mr. Troll.
... "These people are the enemies of the United States of America, just as much as the Judges and Corporations who bend and twist the Constitution to fit their own needs."
You state regarding gun owners: "They clearly fail to realize that they have mis-interpreted the meaning of the 2nd Amendment, using it in such a way as to satisfy their child like need to own a lethal firearm. They choose to ignore the overwhelming statistics that show that gun related accidents, including those that resulted in death, are exponentially higher in the United States of America, than in countries with sensible gun control policies. They choose to ignore that their rights do not extend to gun ownership."
While your assertions regarding the Second Amendment mirror those of the Clinton/Gore administration, they are disproved by a cursory examination of the historical record which others in this thread have already done.
The fact is that there are fewer gun accidents now than ever in history. It may interest you to know that the statistics to which you refer are for the most part propaganda printed in the medical journals, specifically New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association. I call these studies propaganda because they do not meet basic scientific requirements regarding sample selection, statistical analysis, conclusions being supported by data, proper data collection, etc. In short, they are bilge, printed for political purposes. An exhaustive scientific examination of these studies can be found at my web site, http://www.psn.net/~thephantom/ You may find it enlightening.
It may also interest you to know that Britain and Australia have experienced double digit increases in burglary, assault and other violent crimes since implementing the "sensible" gun control policies you refer to, including large increases in crimes committed with guns. On the other hand, states in the USA which have recently adopted "shall issue" concealed carry permit laws like those in Florida, Texas, Arizona etc. have seen double digit decreases in crime rates. Reputable studies have concluded that increasing gun ownership and concealed carry are correlated with decreased violent crime. A quick web search on Kleck, Lott, Mauser or others will turn up plenty of well documented evidence, as I don't expect you to take my word for it.
Kindly check your facts sir before slandering half the adult population. The "Enemies of America" are not the 40 million "child like" gun owners who assert their right to self defense.
I have an off road race car that weighs less than this airmobile, and it handles rather nicely at highway speeds in any kind of wind on or off road. Of course, it has most of it's weight made up in frame, engine and tires and looks pretty much like a bullet with wheels. Handling depends on aerodynamics and suspension, not mass. The hideous composite tub pictured in the article will handle like a pig on skates, and if they are telling the truth about the engine it will never reach highway speed unless it is being towed. The usual objections apply to this airmobile: Low energy density, short range, VERY poor crash survivability (4500 psi = bomb), butt-ugly design, increased dependence on electricity generation etc. Do the planet a favor and get yourself a late model car with computer engine management and a high performance catalytic converter. Less pollution than a coal fired electric plant powering a fleet of these weinermobiles, that's for sure.