nkt

It was easy. I used my middle-aged super-mind-powers. ;-)

I've just read this thread with much mirth. Yes, the title/subject is bigoted. It really wasn't thought through. The topic of this debate should have been neutrally phrased. It is one of the cores of the scientific method - don't ask leading questions! From my experience of arguments, as a forum mod, from working in Big Aero, and from being one of two boys, the most common start of arguments, especially big and noisy ones, is that the two (or more) parties are arguing different things. As things get more frantic, it can be very funny to note how many people are arguing the same thing, from a different angle, using different language forms. {Someone} doesn't get it, because he doesn't seem to understand the argument, possibly because it's not in his list of types of argument? Anyway, this thread cannot be "solved" because it was a poorly phrased question, and everyone is arguing about different things. If we change the debate topic to "Which group is more rational, the young or the elderly?", then we can have a debate. Given the new topic, I would suggest that, in general, the young are more impulsive, and less likely to act rationally. No rational person would drink to excess, to the point of falling down, yet many people do. Binge drinking is a problem mostly of the younger generation, in the UK, where town centres are now the subject of youth curfews and drinking bans. More youths are in prison, and more are committed to prison, than older persons (though the gender gap is even more noticeable) which implies lower impulse control, since most crimes are not pre-planned. As to the questions raised above by some as regards the "obvious" deterioration of the elderly, I would suggest that this is partly a self-selecting set. Many youths who were mentally confused and had issues due to it would already have been subjected to a strong selection pressure during the journey to old age. Those in homes for the last 50 years would be less visible, while those not in care would be more likely to die before reaching old age. Further, those who lost it (or never had it) at a young age 50 years ago could easily be mis-filed. (Though that could easily be argued either way - they are old now, which group do they go in? Both?) That some proportions of both the young and old are bat$hit crazy is true, but we would have to investigate the comparative rates of crazy, as well as track the delta of the crazy function over a short to medium term. Further, who defines crazy or even just stubborn? It is an eternal hope of mine that Terry Pratchett is perfectly fine, and it is the testing process that is wrong. "Do you see persons and characters that are not there?" "Can you hear the voices of the dead in your head?" "What colour is magic?" When you consider his corpus of work, I'm sure he would answer yes to all three of those questions. When you don't consider it, he's a nutter. Much to debate, once the question is properly phrased.

I learned that the £500+ tool I have for a certain task is not yet as good as it will be once I've modified it some more. And I need more practise with it.

Growing an artificial brain seems rather pointless to me. We already have millions of them spare and, in many cases, practically un-used. Plus, it really doesn't answer much. It's like growing a plant and making bread from the grain tells you nothing about how the DNA of the plant works. Moulding one out of silicon? Now that's more interesting. However, I'd suggest using something like an FPGA to model the neuron systems in hardware, if they are well understood. As such, perhaps a few hundred could be run in parallel on each FPGA, and then many PGAs could be interlinked to get parity with a small animal, then, adding more units and newer units and more power, you would build up to having a human equivalent brain model, and, (perhaps) hopefully have a functional brain with a mind in there. Of course, it wouldn't be much like a human. Being able to have perfect recall of everything, and thinking a thousand times faster (at least) than a human, combined with nearly instant look-up of everything via the web, you'd have something the world has never seen.

And yet, this year, no AI did well enough to fool 30% of the Turing Test judges. So close, and yet so far...

There isn't an option for "I really would like a landline, please!" I've got DSL over a phone(land)line, which is pretty much the norm in the UK. We use various VOIP systems to terminate calls here, but, VOIP is sub-optimal. Call quality gets affected, and calls get dropped, when people phone at the wrong time. Screensavers and password prompts mean missed calls occasionally, too. And at night? Well, you've got to have the PC on to get a phone call in, so it has to stay on, running up the power bills far more than a simple, easy to handle, instant to get to old fashioned landline phone. The line is my mothers, but because we live in the stix, there aren't enough wire pairs left for us to get our own line installed. It took us 2 years to get the DSL running! My parents use the DSL via two wireless systems that come to us here. All very neat when it works properly. We are toying with the idea of getting one of the mobile internet (no number, just data) USB thumbs for back-up for when the landline or DSL dies, and for when out and about on the laptop. About £15 a month gets you pretty much unlimited bandwidth via the mobile phone towers. Oh, and between us, we've probably got enough mobiles to open a shop!

How I built a carbon bike frame at home (and a bamboo frame too) - Instructables - DIY, How To, ride, outdoors - Entry I just stumbled across this while browsing my Instructables comments. It is a step-by-step on how to build your own carbon fibre frame for a bike. Needless to say, if you are making the frame, you can make it in any shape you like. If you've not come across carbon fibre anywhere other than for decoration, get yourself to a high-end bike (bicycle) shop. The last three or four years have produced frames that weigh less than my safety boots, with *no* rider weight limit! There are entire bikes that now weight less than my workclothes! (In fact, a lot less, but you'd not believe how heavy my gear is!)

I'm amazed no-one picked up on the issues of Stage 1. A launch from Florida would seem to be unlikely.

I'd not try a transformer ("Wall wart") yet! Measure the resistance of your electromagnet coils, and work out the current it will be required to supply first, or risk blowing it instantly. Use the same current figures to (roughly) determine the life of your batteries. I bet it will be pretty short, since the magnetism is proportional to the current, so the resistance of the coil is low, to get lots of current through it off a single cell. If you do the measurements, post them, I'd be interested.

I had that thought, but I don't think it will work. Steering the rear wheels would require a large radius turning circle underneath, which would require a big heavy joint, and be a probable cause of failure, as well as destroying the drag-ability and hydrodynamics of the underside when the wheels are taken off. The original design has the front wheels steering and driven. This would allow for a very tight turning circle, but the drive, being direct would be very poor. The more typical design of the bicycle is probably the best for the frame. If the design is changed a bit, so the rear wheels can be driven or drive under electronic control, it would be great. However, at the moment I think that having the gears on the underside axle, with a sort of locking system to capture the hub motors would be best. In the perfect world, the hub motors could rotate with the wheels when "off", and then be toggled up or down to either drive the wheels in addition to the pedal/chain drive, or toggled down, to absorb pedal power back into the battery. This would be a great way to allow the hub motors to add a little to the going uphill parts, and also allow a way to recharge the battery quickly, by pedalling with the wheels chocked, unlike the first design where you would have to do something else entirely. Sadly, I haven't really got any idea of how to do this part! Some sort of friction based clutch would work, but would be quite lossy. Perhaps magnets?

It's interesting trying to design something like this. It's a totally new idea from Turtle, and so it is a bit of a blank sheet of paper to start with. I've no formal design background - my degree is a specialist one in aspects of laser physics, and I've worked in aerospace for a big company with no brains and no wit, and I'm now doing stuff that is completely unrelated to either of those areas! However, I've been inventing and designing stuff since forever, and taking things apart to see how they (used to :hihi: ) work. And it's in my blood, my dad's been a Maker since before anyone invented the word. I love these "green field" challenges.

Thanks for the encouragement. Today I was looking at a couple of pedalows, and trying to work out how those could be worked into the design! They are light, they float, and they have a drive underneath via the pedals. I had already though of the idea of driving the wheels with the vanes set like waterwheels on a paddle steamer, but I'd rather not rely on the battery for the drive of them, since that could be an issue, especially if they battery died, as they would then act like a (pair of) sea anchor! Driving them via a chain drive *or* the hub motors would be ideal. It would also allow pedal-power to recharge the battery should you need it! This is something I'd thought of as well, but without a way to add the drive in properly, it wasn't a good option. Now however, I think I've got it. You see the main issue is that there will be stuff in the "boat" where you would otherwise put the drive stuff. And there is the bike part to consider. So, if we run the drive chain around the outside, and have the bike part more like a recumbent bicycle design, we can avoid this issue. If this design can be worked out, it will also get rid of the front-wheel drive to the steering wheels, which removes the issues of turning the wheel and still pedalling neatly (just think of a tot's tricycle to see the steering under driving load issue!) and would also allow the use of a geared bike system with shifting gears. This in turn would give far, far greater efficiency, as the gears could be used for steeper up-hills, whilst for power generation it would be more effective on the downhills than the straight hub motor design. Gar! It's all about the balance between one feature and the next, and there is the extra weight to consider too! But I think a chain drive system will be worth it, for the extra speed and the extra power generation, as well as the addition drive option. Wonder if I can make this thing fairly stable in the water, too? :hihi:

Ah yes. Reminds me of the first thing I said when I heard a news report saying that in famine-struck Africa, an AK47 could be swapped for a chicken or $10. "But if you have the AK, then you simply take the chicken!" Ok, I'm not sure how to get the bit of paper onto the internet in the most effective manor. I write pretty small and messy, so I'll outline the main points here in text, and any questions I'll answer when asked. I designed this to be an all terrain vehicle. It won't be the best on any terrain, but it will get you there, and back, where anything but a hovercraft or one of those neat German waterboat cars from WWII (as seen in the new Indie movie) would fail. This "cart" will ride like a recumbent/sit-on tricycle with fairly good efficiency, on hard, fairly flat roads, due to the thin hard wheels. On steep or softer surfaces, it will not sink, despite the thin hard wheels, and can be "carted". On snow, the wheels come off, and it can be dragged on the built-in skis. And on water, it floats, somewhat like a coracle. The shape is something like a cross between a coracle and a wheelbarrow shaped rickshaw, and the whole thing is made from either carbon fibre or glass fibre, with steel or alloy struts and tubes. The wheels come off easily, and no jack is required, as you can simply walk the shape over onto the "roof" due to the progressive curve of the bottom. The power system uses powerful hub mounted motors for an electric drive system that can also be used for power generation, and the specially created wheels allow the motors to be used for wind power electrical generation, using variable vanes in the spoke sections, and the tubes to loft the wheel for better wind speeds. There is a deep cycle lead acid battery (though an electronically controlled lithium battery set would be better from all aspects except the sheer cost!) and this electrical power can be put back out via the hub motors as either an assist for steep inclines, or returned as an electrical brake system. As regards the water drive system, I'm in two minds. Do we go for a separate screw propeller and driveshaft, or do we go with a "paddle steamer" design? The extra propeller is extra weight, and would require the addition of a rudder system, whilst the paddle wheels would allow turning without issue, but are less effective. However, I'm sure a paddle/rudder would be a useful and very much safer option to have in hand, in case of electrical failure, etc. The mast would be the usual tube arrangement, and the "sail" would be the wind turbine. This would generate power to drive the other motor. Neat, but as I say, it requires a separate prop drive. Another advantage of the prop and shaft would be to have a way to convert a small stream into a power source by dropping the prop in and driving the motor. This is likely to be better than using a wheel as a waterwheel, but this is still theory. I also think that building in a UV water steriliser unit would be wise. You can never have enough clean drinking water, but water is very heavy! A modern high throughput UV system would be ideal. You can always store more (clean) water on the cart itself if you want. Notice I've put no roof or anything like it on the drawing. That would be dependant on your area, I think. Something like the water-filled PVC pipe design Turtle mentioned earlier would be good, if somewhat heavy. Better, I think, would be a simple frame of light bamboo and a mosquito net and light fabric. The bamboo would be useful for other things, as would the net and fabric, without being as top-heavy as the water pipes. However, in the UK I'm never more than a few hundred feet from a rain-filled puddle. If you are in a desert environment, then the water pipes are probably a far better idea. The only terrain I haven't really dealt with here is heavy mud. Dammed near impossible to do anything about that, though. We spent two hours pulling the mini digger out the field the other week as it rained hard overnight and the ground turned to a quagmire. The Landrover simply span it's wheels, and we ended up getting the farmer's twin forked lifting thing out to help drag it up. I figure on a fairly flat field, the cart could be part-powered part-dragged. Beyond that? I've no real idea. If you cannot stand and walk and the tracked vehicles are sinking, then you might be better simply making camp! Enough! Here is the scan.

Hi Turtle, I'm still working on the "perfect" design. It won't be perfect, of course, and everyone will want different things from it. However, I've invented a few new ideas that will add to the design quite substantively. Currently all on paper downstairs. I shall finish up the sketches and post them up for everyone's (hopeful) delight and positive criticism, hopefully before the end of the Bank Holiday Monday (aka tomorrow).

I'm still not convinced that we need Branes to explain anything. I can follow the Big Bang theory from the period of rapid inflation through to the observed universe today, and I have a simple and straightforward theory that explains matter clumping, which relies on nothing more than common sense and special relativity. As regards the idiots who teach creationist theory as fact, I read that a recent report found that this was down to a lot of the teachers not having a solid science background, and so not teaching *any* origin theory as they didn't want to get in to such tricky areas when they wouldn't know more than the students. So the answer is probably to press for legislation saying that a science teacher must have some formal training in science. After all, I wouldn't want a Home Economics teacher as bad at cooking as me!