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Flashman

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Posts posted by Flashman

  1. Given that your truly motivated nutjob would spend 15 years collecting paper clips to forge into a weapon, I think the answer is obviously to ban steel and all metals strong enough to make firearms or edged weapons. Possession of chert, flint or obsidian should likewise be banned. We would all have to manage with plastic eating utensils and pyrex cooking pots (provided they are tempered to shatter into small pieces) but it would be a small price to pay for the freedom to bully and marginalize sensitive individuals until they snapped. Then should they prove adaptive, and merely attempt to gouge peoples eyes out with their thumbs, we should implement compulsory surgically attached thumb caps for all, to prevent entry of a thumb into an eye socket.... eventually we'll have a truly safe society where it's impossible to do anything harmful.

  2. There's pretty much no point, electric heaters are near 100% efficient, the inefficiencies in other uses of electricity are typically related to how easily it makes heat.

     

    Besides, even if "they" buy the patents, they're still registered, there's numerous patent databases on the internet now. Since typically you can use information in a patent for personal/research purposes all you have to do is search out those marvelous patents and make yourself one.

  3. With it being paper, the most effective solvents at dissolving the adhesive will probably dissolve the the ink as well, leaving you with a chromatography experiment rather than a parking sticker. Otherwise I'd be suggesting stuff like "Ronsol" lighter fluid, or "Varsol" mineral spirits. If you want to test solvents, moisten (not sopping wet, just damp) a paper towel with them and press really hard on top of the sticker, if it transfers an image of the print onto the paper towel, forget about that one. Let the sticker dry off again before testing another.

     

    I'd say really your only chance is heat, use anything you can find, hairdryer, fan heater, 150W bulb in a pasta sauce can.... get the adhesive soft and try getting a razor blade under the edge and peel really carefully.

  4. I'd look for them tonight, see if there's a bit of an early flush, but we have a CSS* problem :(

     

    (*Can't see ssssquat, or in this case, can see sleet.)

     

    Just wondering if I could spend the day tomorrow getting one of those hacks to run on my S5IS so I could try some super high ISO 1 or 2 min exposures if it's clear tomorrow

  5. So far I've figured out that the only way the tablecloth is big enough is if it's opposite corners, but after that my sketch turned into an Escher-esque confusion of ever decreasing triangles.

     

    Ah... got .4m each for the other two.... please hold for translation of method from gibberish.

     

    Our tablecloth is square, ABCD clockwise from top left, our table, has it's center E on line AC. AE must equal 60cm, 30cm drop of corner A plus radius of table. AC is root 2. Or to be precise 1.4ish.

     

    We need to find length ED and EB which are in symmetry about AC.

     

    Drawing a line perpendicular to AD to E gives us one side of a triangle the hypotenuse of which is ED. Where it crosses AD is point F

     

    EF forms a 45 degree triangle with AE, where the hypotenuse is 60cm, and therefore AE is square root of .6^2/2 = 0.424

     

    The other side DF is 1-.424

     

    So sqrt ( (1-.424)^2 + .424^2) = DE = .715m

     

    We want drop from edge of table so taking diameter of table away .715 - .3 = .415 m

  6. Double boiler would avoid it, use a pyrex vessel in/on a pan of water. Preferably supported off the bottom of the pan.

     

    Think last time I bought one of those products, with a name strikingly similar to "I can't believe it's not butt hair" it was 45% water. Made toast unbearably soggy anyway.

  7. Any ordinary table can stop a book from falling countering the gravity due to the entire earth in the process!

     

    Something in the perky confidence of that statement makes me want to get a 2kg book and a walmart dining table, and drop it on it from 100m or so....

  8. Usually they are two or three terminal devices based on voltage bias. However you could set up a bridge circuit that alters bias across them according to resistance.

  9. I'd say the "gross of lazy sheepherders" made the renaissance possible. :P

     

    ""The wool trade developed into serious business, the generator of capital. In the thirteenth century, the wool trade was the economic engine of the Low Countries and of Central Italy; by the end of the following century Italy predominated, though in the 16th century Italian production turned to silk (Braudel p 312). Both pre-industries were based on English raw wool exports - rivaled only by the sheepwalks of Castile, developed from the fifteenth century - which were a significant source of income to the English crown, which from 1275 imposed an export tax on wool called the "Great Custom". The importance of wool to the English economy can be shown by the fact that since the 14th Century, the presiding officer of the House of Lords has sat on the "Woolsack", a chair stuffed with wool.""

     

    ""Before the flowering of the Renaissance, the Medici and other great banking houses of Florence had built their wealth and banking system on their textile industry based on wool, overseen by the Arte della Lana, the wool guild: wool textile interests guided Florentine policies. Francesco Datini, the "merchant of Prato", established in 1383 an Arte della Lana for that small Tuscan city. The sheepwalks of Castile shaped the landscape and the fortunes of the meseta that lies in the heart of the Iberian peninsula; in the sixteenth century, a unified Spain allowed export of Merino lambs only with royal permission. The German wool market - based on sheep of Spanish origin - did not overtake British wool until comparatively late.""

     

    This economic engine fomented the development of bustling street markets, which developed into covered markets, and row stores developed into covered arcades, both presaging the ultimate temple of mindless consumerism, on which altar we sacrifice our youth, the mall.

     

    So actually we have those shepherds to thank for being too damn busy and begetting the cloth, clothing and fashion industries that are something of a cornerstone of consumerism.

     

    Anyway, without the shepherds lining the pockets of the Medicis, Leonardo wouldn't have been able to sit around dreaming of helicopters, and Galilei would have still had his world revolving around where he got his next meal.

  10. Butter shouldn't have a lot of water in it, a "Butter flavored spread" or margarine might.... thinking back to way back when, when we did the compulsory 6 weeks of home ec. in school, I think we were told to use a double boiler for melting butter/marge.

  11. A way to think of it is, that when the bulk velocity of a fluid is zero, it's molecules in random motion are causing pressure on a surface by pounding on it randomly, according to the amount of thermal energy in the fluid. When in motion across a surface, the fluid is more organised, the molecules have more velocity in the direction of travel, and less molecules pound on the surface. The more velocity the fluid has, the less component of velocity the molecules have in a perpendicular direction to it, so they pound on it less.

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