Last year I went to Bermuda, where like many islands around the world, they rely on collecting rain water for personal use. I was entirely impressed, though, that everyone does this as a matter-of-fact process. Not everyone has street plumbing to fall back on. While I'm not going to say Kansas gets as much rain as Bermuda does, there's a lot to be said for the fact that everyone manages to live comfortably in a 1st world nation by collecting all the water their house needs from the roof runoff.
Obviously, it'd take a lot of effort to adapt everyone's house, but if you built new ones that way, you could at least make a dent in the demand, while having people become more self sufficient.
Most of the time, autocorrect helps me with my lack of typing ability rather than actually correcting a word that I did not know how to spell. But I still prefer the red underline, so you have to fix it yourself.
To me, AIM called instant attention to spelling lazyness, not grammar issues. I thought it was an AIM-borne disease where one by one my friends all started to use 'your' in place of "you're." I think it's an easy place to pick up bad speaking habits, but that's certainly nothing new... people pick up local 'common' dialects from their region. You don't see many people putting words like "y'all" or "wassup" in formal presentations and letters. You just have to make sure that the local lingo, internet or otherwise, isn't the only language they learn.
as more people are directly connected with one another, there's no need to go through the classic "get myself on TV" or "get myself a movie role" avenues to get popular attention.
In college, which is now between 3.5 and 8 years ago for me, my computer itself was far more popular than I was. I hosted all kinds of fun stuff (some legal, some illegal) but the popular things were videos I made with my laptop and webcam of amusing college exploits. I had microwave tricks with eggs blowing the door open, and stable plasmoids, as well as videos of driving an electric go-kart through the halls and up the elevator of the engineering building.
They were popular videos, and I had thousands of hits, but I was behind the camera.
Point is, when everyone has the ability to connect directly to one another through computers, the new "word of mouth" popularity is replaced and amplified by the email forward with a URL in it. The problem is that you can become famous in a matter of a week or 2, but you can be forgotten just as quickly if you don't keep it rolling.
I'd agree with you, but then I remember all those people who actually click on spam links and buy stuff from them.
I think the end result will be polarized... either companies will make ads that are entertaining/amusing to watch, or TiVo will start offering premium fees for advertizers so they can make their commercial un-skippable.
We've all seen DVDs that don't allow you to skip the previews in front of the main menu. Some actually let you fast-forward, but not skip over them. And granted, it's self-advertizing for the studio, but it's shameless enough that I'd fully expect that forced TV commercials will appear at some point in the near future.
But I'm not a Netflix subscriber. Just not big into movies.
But the bigger and more complicated a decision, the easier it is for me to decide. Choosing a college: Simple. I went, I looked, and by the time I needed to apply, I'd already decided. Only applied to 1 school. (Graduated 3 + years ago, picked up a dual Engr. degree, and had a blast). Buying a car? Simple. I knew what I wanted. Buying a house? Simple. (Going on 2 years now, still satisfied).
But man... you put me in front of a vending machine and I cannot make up my friggin mind. I'm not kidding. I can't decide. I'll stand there staring at it. Speaking of which.
I'm not much of a traveller myself (though I have a valid US passport with stamps on it), but I do take some issue with assertion. Even if it's true, I think your Kerry vs Bush passport data needs a source citation and explanation of the study. Regardless, my real issue is that liberal or conservative, there are plenty of non-partisan reasons for why I didn't vote for Kerry. In my opinion, the largest indirect result of Bush's policies (i.e. not the ones directly resulting from piss poor decisions) is that so many Americans, and indeed the world, will start assuming that all conservatives/republicans are the same as the GW Bush conservative, faith-based, anti-gay, Christian neo-crusaders. There are plenty of well educated, socially centrist or even socially liberal people who are still conservative and republican in general. I've explained this to many a foreigner, and they seemed a bit surprised. I went to Bermuda last year, and was fully embarrassed by some of the American representation that showed up. A cruise ship from Boston let out a load of ratty t-shirts, fanny packs, camcorders, and loud mouthed obnoxiousness. Some of the locals I talked to at a table next to us didn't even realize we were tourists. I wore nice clothes (business casual best summarizes it) had my digicam in my pocket, and I was quiet and polite. That's all there was to it. I'm a New Englander myself, so it's not like I represent a vastly different part of the USA.
Point being is that there were probably a large number of those Bostonians who view themselves as liberal and voted for their own senator Kerry, yet still do not give the world a good view of Americans.
You've really hit the point, there. When I read the article, my first impression is that they've lumped together what I perceive as 2 separate gadget groups. One group really enjoys new gadgets, loves widgets and doodads and anything that clicks, whirrs, and blinks. The other group wants to be seen with the latest technology as a social status symbol. There's an overlap, sure, but just because people want something new doesn't mean they really like the new thing. It's part of keeping up appearances. Jewlry, clothes, cars... all visible symbols.
It's very true... I consider myself quite computer literate, but there have been times during storm-caused power outages where I've thought I'd go check the weather radar online. It never gets more than about 1 second's worth of thought, let alone gets me to walk to my computer, but I do feel pretty stupid for that brief moment.
It's not necessarily even the high salary... I'm in my mid twenties, with my parents looking at retirement in the next ~7 years or so. The vast majority of their nest egg is tied up in the homestead. which he built with his own two hands some 34 years ago. The location, though, is southwestern CT, and as a result, property values have made quite a steady increase in that timeframe. I was the 4th generation living in that town until I moved out of the home 3 years ago. My father has lived on the same street his whole life. Neither of my parents have a college degree, but my father has made a huge effort to be a responsible provider and manager of personal finances. When he retires, he'll probably sell the house. I honestly don't care if I get one cent when he dies, but I know for damned sure he'd sooner piss away his hard earned cash on dune buggies than give a portion to the gov't through a tax.
I have a MechEng/ Materials dual degree, and one of my later courses was actually a "Metal Failures" course, dedicated to this kind of stuff. Most of it was more complicated. My professor was actually a retired PhD who worked on investigative teams that evaluated accidents like these, and acted as the 'expert witness' for technical information in many cour cases.
We studied this case, as well as many on the list above, in detail. In particular, the box beams in question ran horizontally to support the walkway, while the vertical rod was the support for the end of the box beams. The beams could have been made better, but they were good enough for their design loads.
The problem was that the original design called for one continuous vertical rod, with several levels of walkway hanging from it at different heights. However, due to construction issues, the installation was changed (for the worse) so that separate vertical rods were used. This unfortunately got written approval, and shouldn't have. Instead of the successive loads being applied to the rod, the box beam was then holding the weight of all the floors below it, which it was not designed to do.
Imagine one rope hanging from a ceiling, with 3 people hanging at various heights on the rope. The rope can hold the total weight of the 3 people easily, but each climber needs only enough grip to hold up his own weight. Now imagine due to "construction issues" you can't get one long rope, so you get 2 shorter lengths. Ideally, you'd tie the ropes together to create a nearly identical scenario, but in this case, it's like they tied the bottom rope to the middle guy's ankle, and expected him to hold on with the added weight of the guy below him.
Unfortunately, it was just strong enough to hold a few people, but let go when it was fully loaded.
Most of my high school friends who were smart enough to persue science degrees never followed the directions on those things anyways. They just combined stuff together to see what happened. They did that with other chemicals, too, not just the ones in the kit.
If people are interested in science, they'll try their own crazy stuff their own way. What should *really* be sold are safety kits... flame suits, face shields... I mean, who here hasn't made a flame thrower with an aerosol can, or a potato gun w/PVC pipe, or tried to make some homemade napalm from some rumor-recipe that didn't work?
We did all kinds of microwave tricks in the dorm microwave in college 5 years ago... it wasn't terrorism, but we did make a stable plasmoid.
And actually, just yesterday, my college friend asked me for copies of the microwave videos and any other pranks/explosions. (They were mostly harmless) The reason is that his wife is pregnant, and he wants to make sure his kid is brought up right. After all, you don't want to blow the door off your *own* microwave...
Let's not forget Al Gore's wife Tipper... she vehemently led the crusade for the 'obscene lyrics' music warning labels. Wonder what she'd have done if Myspace were around in the early '90s.
Generally, I'm a pretty conservative guy... but I see different things in "liberal" and "conservative" than most general people do. To me, the worst thing GW Bush has done (besides making piss poor executive decisions) is given the impression that conservatives/republican folks are conservative as a result of religious beliefs. And for many, that's true... but that's just not the case across the board. Not nearly so.
The biggest issue I have with the typical liberal camp is that they seem to operate with the concept that the general population are a bunch of imbiciles that don't know what they want, and cannot take care of themselves. Al Gore and John Kerry just spoke with such a patronizing tone that seemed to indicate that they wanted people to just go to work, and the gov't will spoonfeed them and shelter them. I always see Slashdot as a pretty liberal group... but many of us forget that we're also quite well educated compared to average, and generally quite capable of planning for retirement, finding a job with health care, and looking after our children's online activities.
On issues like MySpace, you see people in certain political parties coming full circle... so left they're right, and vice-versa. Nobody wants to give the opinion that they're not taking action against people that prey on kids... but nobody wants to infringe on free speech. So you get a complicated mix of "everyone fend for themseles/parents make sure you're doing your job/don't be naive and use common sense" and the typical ignorant crowd that always screams out "This is an outrage! Someone ought to make a law! What's being done to protect me!" It's difficult to actually label which choice is liberal, and which is conservative, 'cause it just isn't clear anymore... it's always tough when free speech/expression is used by a criminal. You can take the gun from the potential killer, but can you take the speech from a potential social offender?
Unfortunately, when you leave things up to individuals, there are always people who drop the ball. But when the latter group screams out "someone else ought to do something" you end up with a lot of stupid laws.
Lieberman is my senator... and I've never voted for him, because in the years I've been old enough to vote, he seems to have lost direction and given into the passing political outcries. He's a smart guy, but now he's just blowing in the wind.
Safety scissors, perhaps, but it's the first Linux distribution I'm willing to try right now. I'm a Mechanical Engineer by degree and profession, and while I built my own computer and maintain it, I don't have the computer capabilities that most Slashdotters have. I have a spare computer I've pieced together with extra parts from various places, so I figured I'd try Linux. I have an Ubuntu disc ready to go for tomorrow, the first time I'll ever have tried anything Linux on my own computer. To date, it's been all Windows boxes.
I'm not a programmer. I don't develop software, and I don't really write code. I'm just not hardcore in that regard. But I'm willing to try new stuff, and I'm going to go with the easy option right now. That's why Ubuntu appeals to me. From what I continually read on Slashdot, this is exactly the kind of thing that Linux and Open Source software needs to gain more widespread use... getting people with an interest to bridge the gap without a big effort.
The first thing I thought about when I saw the headline of the article was that Simpsons episode. The better quote, though, is
Owner: [sweeping a bunch of toads out] Get out, get out! Shoo, shoo.
Get out of here, yuck! These bloody things are everywhere.
They're in the lift, in the lorry, in the bond wizard, and all
over the malonga gilderchuck. Clerk: They're like kangaroos, but they're reptiles, they is. Marge: We have them in America. They're called bullfrogs. Clerk: What? That's an odd name. I'd have called them "chazzwazzers".
You know, I happen to be a mechanical engineer at Electric Boat in Groton, CT, where we design & build nuclear subs for the US Navy. The focus of design in the past several years (post cold-war) has been centered around special operations forces capabilities, like sending out Navy SEAL frogmen and the like. And occasionally, I think... a screen door really would help keep the fish and seaweed out of the lockout chamber when the frogmen are out on the mission. And then I just shake my head and say "How would I ever suggest to someone that it might be useful to put a screen door on the submarine?" I'm not even Polish, so I don't even have an excuse.
Re:What would Slashdotters have Santa singing?
on
Hacking Santa
·
· Score: 5, Funny
You know, you've left the rest of us just hoping, for your sake, that there was no overlapping time period of when you began pleasuring yourself and when you stopped believing in Santa.
I don't see why there'd be any need for a special catalytic converter. It'd be a gasoline engine just the same... same exhaust composition to catalyze. To my knowledge, the other gas/electric hybrids out there like the Prius don't have a cat that's much different from the Echo's.
Speaking as a MechE, steam systems are extremely well studied, and have a long standing track record of proven reliability. Steam systems in modern ships and power plants are some of the best examples. There's no reason why BMW's engineers wouldn't be able to find the resources to design and manufacture a steam system with equal or greater reliability and lifespan than the gasoline system.
The only valid concern is the collision aspect. High pressure steam is deadly... and while I think one could be assured of a reasonable measure of safety, there's still an added risk compared to the traditional vehicle it's in.
Funny... my parents actually said the same line to me. "If you wait 'til you're ready, you'll be waiting forever." I'm 25, have a bachelors, a job, and am a homeowner as of a few months ago. And despite a hefty mortgage and student loans that will bleed me for years, I'm evidently better off than most. I have a steady girlfriend, too, but I'm not quite ready to make the next step just yet.
My father and mother were 22 and 19 years old, respectively, when they got married. Most of my friends who are my age now were born to parents who were mid-20s at the time. It was just expected.
I have 2 college friends with children. One of them had her daughter after an unintentional pregnancy. She married the father, and are just barely scraping by. The other friend got married straight out of college, after getting a job. He's on his second house, and has a new daughter. Neither of them are well off... but the point is that whether or not they were ready for it, they were both determined to stay afloat. There's plenty of "what happens if..." scenarios, but the mindset to take care of yourself and your family is really key. There are too many people who claim they're a victim of circumstance, and justify not doing anything about it.
To bring it back around... if you're on your computer all day staring at digital renderings of the ideal woman, whose fault is it if you don't get laid or procreate? You can blame the provider of said renderings, computer culture, your parents for your looks, or society in general. But you've got nobody to blame but yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Last year I went to Bermuda, where like many islands around the world, they rely on collecting rain water for personal use. I was entirely impressed, though, that everyone does this as a matter-of-fact process. Not everyone has street plumbing to fall back on. While I'm not going to say Kansas gets as much rain as Bermuda does, there's a lot to be said for the fact that everyone manages to live comfortably in a 1st world nation by collecting all the water their house needs from the roof runoff.
Obviously, it'd take a lot of effort to adapt everyone's house, but if you built new ones that way, you could at least make a dent in the demand, while having people become more self sufficient.
Hair gel?
Most of the time, autocorrect helps me with my lack of typing ability rather than actually correcting a word that I did not know how to spell. But I still prefer the red underline, so you have to fix it yourself.
To me, AIM called instant attention to spelling lazyness, not grammar issues. I thought it was an AIM-borne disease where one by one my friends all started to use 'your' in place of "you're." I think it's an easy place to pick up bad speaking habits, but that's certainly nothing new... people pick up local 'common' dialects from their region. You don't see many people putting words like "y'all" or "wassup" in formal presentations and letters. You just have to make sure that the local lingo, internet or otherwise, isn't the only language they learn.
as more people are directly connected with one another, there's no need to go through the classic "get myself on TV" or "get myself a movie role" avenues to get popular attention.
In college, which is now between 3.5 and 8 years ago for me, my computer itself was far more popular than I was. I hosted all kinds of fun stuff (some legal, some illegal) but the popular things were videos I made with my laptop and webcam of amusing college exploits. I had microwave tricks with eggs blowing the door open, and stable plasmoids, as well as videos of driving an electric go-kart through the halls and up the elevator of the engineering building.
They were popular videos, and I had thousands of hits, but I was behind the camera.
Point is, when everyone has the ability to connect directly to one another through computers, the new "word of mouth" popularity is replaced and amplified by the email forward with a URL in it. The problem is that you can become famous in a matter of a week or 2, but you can be forgotten just as quickly if you don't keep it rolling.
I'd agree with you, but then I remember all those people who actually click on spam links and buy stuff from them.
I think the end result will be polarized... either companies will make ads that are entertaining/amusing to watch, or TiVo will start offering premium fees for advertizers so they can make their commercial un-skippable.
We've all seen DVDs that don't allow you to skip the previews in front of the main menu. Some actually let you fast-forward, but not skip over them. And granted, it's self-advertizing for the studio, but it's shameless enough that I'd fully expect that forced TV commercials will appear at some point in the near future.
But I'm not a Netflix subscriber. Just not big into movies.
But the bigger and more complicated a decision, the easier it is for me to decide. Choosing a college: Simple. I went, I looked, and by the time I needed to apply, I'd already decided. Only applied to 1 school. (Graduated 3 + years ago, picked up a dual Engr. degree, and had a blast). Buying a car? Simple. I knew what I wanted. Buying a house? Simple. (Going on 2 years now, still satisfied).
But man... you put me in front of a vending machine and I cannot make up my friggin mind. I'm not kidding. I can't decide. I'll stand there staring at it. Speaking of which.
I'm not much of a traveller myself (though I have a valid US passport with stamps on it), but I do take some issue with assertion. Even if it's true, I think your Kerry vs Bush passport data needs a source citation and explanation of the study. Regardless, my real issue is that liberal or conservative, there are plenty of non-partisan reasons for why I didn't vote for Kerry.
In my opinion, the largest indirect result of Bush's policies (i.e. not the ones directly resulting from piss poor decisions) is that so many Americans, and indeed the world, will start assuming that all conservatives/republicans are the same as the GW Bush conservative, faith-based, anti-gay, Christian neo-crusaders. There are plenty of well educated, socially centrist or even socially liberal people who are still conservative and republican in general. I've explained this to many a foreigner, and they seemed a bit surprised.
I went to Bermuda last year, and was fully embarrassed by some of the American representation that showed up. A cruise ship from Boston let out a load of ratty t-shirts, fanny packs, camcorders, and loud mouthed obnoxiousness. Some of the locals I talked to at a table next to us didn't even realize we were tourists. I wore nice clothes (business casual best summarizes it) had my digicam in my pocket, and I was quiet and polite. That's all there was to it. I'm a New Englander myself, so it's not like I represent a vastly different part of the USA.
Point being is that there were probably a large number of those Bostonians who view themselves as liberal and voted for their own senator Kerry, yet still do not give the world a good view of Americans.
C'mon, he's on Slashdot and quoting Zoidberg's line about his inability to get laid. You probably don't need to ask that question.
...to make them fit in at school.
You've really hit the point, there. When I read the article, my first impression is that they've lumped together what I perceive as 2 separate gadget groups. One group really enjoys new gadgets, loves widgets and doodads and anything that clicks, whirrs, and blinks. The other group wants to be seen with the latest technology as a social status symbol. There's an overlap, sure, but just because people want something new doesn't mean they really like the new thing. It's part of keeping up appearances. Jewlry, clothes, cars... all visible symbols.
Fitting in at school will sell almost anything.
Yeah, I just don't think I want a child so badly that I'd allow someone to carve out a chunk of my testicle.
Don't forget... she'll always need someone to nag.
It's very true... I consider myself quite computer literate, but there have been times during storm-caused power outages where I've thought I'd go check the weather radar online. It never gets more than about 1 second's worth of thought, let alone gets me to walk to my computer, but I do feel pretty stupid for that brief moment.
Of course, the Simpsons did it... but unlike blocking out the sun, there have been many thousands before who have made that grievous mistake.
It's not necessarily even the high salary... I'm in my mid twenties, with my parents looking at retirement in the next ~7 years or so. The vast majority of their nest egg is tied up in the homestead. which he built with his own two hands some 34 years ago. The location, though, is southwestern CT, and as a result, property values have made quite a steady increase in that timeframe.
I was the 4th generation living in that town until I moved out of the home 3 years ago. My father has lived on the same street his whole life. Neither of my parents have a college degree, but my father has made a huge effort to be a responsible provider and manager of personal finances.
When he retires, he'll probably sell the house. I honestly don't care if I get one cent when he dies, but I know for damned sure he'd sooner piss away his hard earned cash on dune buggies than give a portion to the gov't through a tax.
I have a MechEng/ Materials dual degree, and one of my later courses was actually a "Metal Failures" course, dedicated to this kind of stuff. Most of it was more complicated. My professor was actually a retired PhD who worked on investigative teams that evaluated accidents like these, and acted as the 'expert witness' for technical information in many cour cases.
We studied this case, as well as many on the list above, in detail. In particular, the box beams in question ran horizontally to support the walkway, while the vertical rod was the support for the end of the box beams. The beams could have been made better, but they were good enough for their design loads.
The problem was that the original design called for one continuous vertical rod, with several levels of walkway hanging from it at different heights. However, due to construction issues, the installation was changed (for the worse) so that separate vertical rods were used. This unfortunately got written approval, and shouldn't have. Instead of the successive loads being applied to the rod, the box beam was then holding the weight of all the floors below it, which it was not designed to do.
Imagine one rope hanging from a ceiling, with 3 people hanging at various heights on the rope. The rope can hold the total weight of the 3 people easily, but each climber needs only enough grip to hold up his own weight. Now imagine due to "construction issues" you can't get one long rope, so you get 2 shorter lengths. Ideally, you'd tie the ropes together to create a nearly identical scenario, but in this case, it's like they tied the bottom rope to the middle guy's ankle, and expected him to hold on with the added weight of the guy below him.
Unfortunately, it was just strong enough to hold a few people, but let go when it was fully loaded.
=
Most of my high school friends who were smart enough to persue science degrees never followed the directions on those things anyways. They just combined stuff together to see what happened. They did that with other chemicals, too, not just the ones in the kit.
If people are interested in science, they'll try their own crazy stuff their own way. What should *really* be sold are safety kits... flame suits, face shields... I mean, who here hasn't made a flame thrower with an aerosol can, or a potato gun w/PVC pipe, or tried to make some homemade napalm from some rumor-recipe that didn't work?
We did all kinds of microwave tricks in the dorm microwave in college 5 years ago... it wasn't terrorism, but we did make a stable plasmoid.
And actually, just yesterday, my college friend asked me for copies of the microwave videos and any other pranks/explosions. (They were mostly harmless) The reason is that his wife is pregnant, and he wants to make sure his kid is brought up right.
After all, you don't want to blow the door off your *own* microwave...
Let's not forget Al Gore's wife Tipper... she vehemently led the crusade for the 'obscene lyrics' music warning labels. Wonder what she'd have done if Myspace were around in the early '90s.
Generally, I'm a pretty conservative guy... but I see different things in "liberal" and "conservative" than most general people do. To me, the worst thing GW Bush has done (besides making piss poor executive decisions) is given the impression that conservatives/republican folks are conservative as a result of religious beliefs. And for many, that's true... but that's just not the case across the board. Not nearly so.
The biggest issue I have with the typical liberal camp is that they seem to operate with the concept that the general population are a bunch of imbiciles that don't know what they want, and cannot take care of themselves. Al Gore and John Kerry just spoke with such a patronizing tone that seemed to indicate that they wanted people to just go to work, and the gov't will spoonfeed them and shelter them. I always see Slashdot as a pretty liberal group... but many of us forget that we're also quite well educated compared to average, and generally quite capable of planning for retirement, finding a job with health care, and looking after our children's online activities.
On issues like MySpace, you see people in certain political parties coming full circle... so left they're right, and vice-versa. Nobody wants to give the opinion that they're not taking action against people that prey on kids... but nobody wants to infringe on free speech. So you get a complicated mix of "everyone fend for themseles/parents make sure you're doing your job/don't be naive and use common sense" and the typical ignorant crowd that always screams out "This is an outrage! Someone ought to make a law! What's being done to protect me!" It's difficult to actually label which choice is liberal, and which is conservative, 'cause it just isn't clear anymore... it's always tough when free speech/expression is used by a criminal. You can take the gun from the potential killer, but can you take the speech from a potential social offender?
Unfortunately, when you leave things up to individuals, there are always people who drop the ball. But when the latter group screams out "someone else ought to do something" you end up with a lot of stupid laws.
Lieberman is my senator... and I've never voted for him, because in the years I've been old enough to vote, he seems to have lost direction and given into the passing political outcries. He's a smart guy, but now he's just blowing in the wind.
Safety scissors, perhaps, but it's the first Linux distribution I'm willing to try right now. I'm a Mechanical Engineer by degree and profession, and while I built my own computer and maintain it, I don't have the computer capabilities that most Slashdotters have. I have a spare computer I've pieced together with extra parts from various places, so I figured I'd try Linux. I have an Ubuntu disc ready to go for tomorrow, the first time I'll ever have tried anything Linux on my own computer. To date, it's been all Windows boxes.
I'm not a programmer. I don't develop software, and I don't really write code. I'm just not hardcore in that regard. But I'm willing to try new stuff, and I'm going to go with the easy option right now. That's why Ubuntu appeals to me. From what I continually read on Slashdot, this is exactly the kind of thing that Linux and Open Source software needs to gain more widespread use... getting people with an interest to bridge the gap without a big effort.
Lisa: "Here, Clip Clop! Seriously, make with the pony."
The first thing I thought about when I saw the headline of the article was that Simpsons episode. The better quote, though, is
Owner: [sweeping a bunch of toads out] Get out, get out! Shoo, shoo.
Get out of here, yuck! These bloody things are everywhere.
They're in the lift, in the lorry, in the bond wizard, and all
over the malonga gilderchuck.
Clerk: They're like kangaroos, but they're reptiles, they is.
Marge: We have them in America. They're called bullfrogs.
Clerk: What? That's an odd name. I'd have called them "chazzwazzers".
You know, I happen to be a mechanical engineer at Electric Boat in Groton, CT, where we design & build nuclear subs for the US Navy. The focus of design in the past several years (post cold-war) has been centered around special operations forces capabilities, like sending out Navy SEAL frogmen and the like.
And occasionally, I think... a screen door really would help keep the fish and seaweed out of the lockout chamber when the frogmen are out on the mission.
And then I just shake my head and say "How would I ever suggest to someone that it might be useful to put a screen door on the submarine?" I'm not even Polish, so I don't even have an excuse.
You know, you've left the rest of us just hoping, for your sake, that there was no overlapping time period of when you began pleasuring yourself and when you stopped believing in Santa.
I don't see why there'd be any need for a special catalytic converter. It'd be a gasoline engine just the same... same exhaust composition to catalyze. To my knowledge, the other gas/electric hybrids out there like the Prius don't have a cat that's much different from the Echo's.
Speaking as a MechE, steam systems are extremely well studied, and have a long standing track record of proven reliability. Steam systems in modern ships and power plants are some of the best examples. There's no reason why BMW's engineers wouldn't be able to find the resources to design and manufacture a steam system with equal or greater reliability and lifespan than the gasoline system.
The only valid concern is the collision aspect. High pressure steam is deadly... and while I think one could be assured of a reasonable measure of safety, there's still an added risk compared to the traditional vehicle it's in.
Funny... my parents actually said the same line to me. "If you wait 'til you're ready, you'll be waiting forever." I'm 25, have a bachelors, a job, and am a homeowner as of a few months ago. And despite a hefty mortgage and student loans that will bleed me for years, I'm evidently better off than most. I have a steady girlfriend, too, but I'm not quite ready to make the next step just yet.
My father and mother were 22 and 19 years old, respectively, when they got married. Most of my friends who are my age now were born to parents who were mid-20s at the time. It was just expected.
I have 2 college friends with children. One of them had her daughter after an unintentional pregnancy. She married the father, and are just barely scraping by. The other friend got married straight out of college, after getting a job. He's on his second house, and has a new daughter. Neither of them are well off... but the point is that whether or not they were ready for it, they were both determined to stay afloat. There's plenty of "what happens if..." scenarios, but the mindset to take care of yourself and your family is really key. There are too many people who claim they're a victim of circumstance, and justify not doing anything about it.
To bring it back around... if you're on your computer all day staring at digital renderings of the ideal woman, whose fault is it if you don't get laid or procreate? You can blame the provider of said renderings, computer culture, your parents for your looks, or society in general. But you've got nobody to blame but yourself.
My fingers are too greasy and fat to perform such feats.
Perhaps from eating too many Pringles?