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Manticore

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Everything posted by Manticore

  1. Fundamentalist preachers seem to come in two varieties - the purely deranged and the scam artist. The simplest way to tell the difference is that the scammer will end every sermon with something along the lines of: "Give money! Give lots of money! Give it to me! Give it now!" I know at least as many Muslims as I do Christians. In general, I find them better company. Edit: Corrected typo.
  2. Rather more believable than the OP's version I would think.
  3. Nothing changes: William Cobbett 'Cottage Economy' - 1822 "The drink which has come to supply the place of beer has, in general, been tea. It is notorious that tea has no useful strength in it; that it contains nothing nutritious; that it, besides being good for nothing, has badness in it, because it is well known to produce want of sleep in many cases, and in all cases, to shake and weaken the nerves. It is, in fact, a weaker kind of laudanum, which enlivens for the moment and deadens afterwards. At any rate it communicates no strength to the body; it does not, in any degree, assist in affording what labour demands. It is, then, of no use."
  4. Can't remember where this came from. "Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value."
  5. I think most of the women I know would hit me with a brick if I came out with any of these.
  6. Look up 'piezo road' on duckduckgo.com (I won't go near Google anymore).
  7. Apart from traffic problems (not to mention the inevitable presence of drunken idiots & those who would find a way of hacking the control systems) the main problem is that the requirements for road vehicles and aircraft are very different. If it is any good as a car, it is probably going to be a rubbish aircraft and vice versa.
  8. Forget cars - you should be looking at aircraft -that's where weight reduction is really important. Check http://douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/museum.htm. I think he's got pretty well every unusual engine configuration ever invented. (I spent quite a while designing a crankshaft that would let me use double ended pistons a few years ago - sure enough, when I looked, there it was on Douglas Self's site - 1877. Designed by Charles Parsons no less - same guy who invented the steam turbine.)
  9. Get rid of all Microsoft products. Upgrade to Linux - or BSD - or almost anything else.
  10. From: www.thoughtco.com (other sources agree) Design of the first heart-lung machine began in the early 1930s. It was first used for open heart surgery in 1953. Assuming you were 20 when you began working on it and that you were only involved for a short time (with the version first used on humans) right at the very end, that would make you - at minimum - 84 years old. If you claim to have been involved from the beginning then you could be as much as 106 years old. So congratulations, I guess. Edit: Apparently, Maximilian von Frey had previously invented a heart-lung machine in 1885 (gismodo.com). If that is the one you worked on you must now be at least 150 years old - so double congratulations!
  11. Downwind faster than the wind. https://phys.org/news/2010-06-wind-powered-car-faster.html I believe the same team later managed to travel upwind faster than the wind also.
  12. "Consider the following (correct) statement. There is always one more post than panel in a fence with no gaps or loose ends." Only if the ends of the fence are unconnected.
  13. Probably not entirely relevant, but many years ago I worked for a couple of years for a drain clearing company. I left to do a degree in Astrophysics. One of my assistants had a Masters in Entomology. (It is not always wise to make assumptions about a persons level of education based on the job they have.)
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