The speed of light is NOT constant

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#363
Brain warp: Look where science and materials have gone post WWII. Now consider we still build houses out of trees held together with iron age spikes built on site, with paper and tar for a roof. I cook over an open flame. My shoes are made form animal skins. What is wrong with this picture! Maybe my coffee pot that has a processor in it to just boil water.
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Don't let this get you down. Design and product development time and testing for transistorized devices is about 60 years. Design and product development time and testing for trees and animal skins is about 3.5 Billion years. So we're not doing badly.
 
#364
 
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#365
Down? Heck no. I just find the human condition terribly funny and often ironic.
I happen to be terribly impatient and want to know everything about whatever catches my eye instantly. Believe it or not, I have actually made a decent living at learning 80% of something new very quickly. Just enough to hire the guy who knows the other 20% and not get taken for a ride. We call that "project management"

I joke about natural materials, but they are actually wonders. If we invented paper today, it would be called a micro-fiber entangled cellulose composite. Still makes the best woofers. Silk has yet to be matched. As I am also a woodworker, I could go on forever about that! I do have a pet peeve in how we build houses here. Just plain stupid.
 
#368
tvrgeek said:
As I am also a woodworker, I could go on forever about that! I do have a pet peeve in how we build houses here. Just plain stupid.
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I agree. (I am former framer, now cabinet maker.)

The way we currently build was designed after the war as an easy way to use unskilled labor to quickly build new homes. AKA "Platform Framing"
Efficiency was not a concern.

Having said that I much rather renovate a post-war structure then a Victorian era balloon framed structure.

In some ways it is a step up from classical ways, as now we have a code to follow, a set of standards if you will that keeps things level and straight over time.

Although much of the romance is gone.
 
#369
Few facts about modern technology with all that "code to follow, standards"...

* Wrapping paper and shopping bags alone account for about 4 million tons of trash annually in the U.S.
* A church made from cardboard will temporarily replace the Christchurch Cathedral that was heavily damaged when a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck New Zealand's Canterbury region in February.
* The EPA estimates that by the end of 2007, there were over 99 million TVs stockpiled or stored in the US.
* A ton of used mobile phones, for example - or approximately 6,000 handsets (a tiny fraction of today's 1 billion annual production) -- contains about 3.5 kilograms of silver, 340 grams of gold, 140 grams of palladium, and 130 kg of copper, according to StEP. The average mobile phone battery contains another 3.5 grams of copper. Combined value: over US $15,000 at today's prices.
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#370
No kidding, balloon framing and knob & tube, lumber not current sizes, asbestos, and lead pipes. No, the way to build houses is in a factory with different materials. Design to order. Bad news to the trades, but it should be easier to replace a 50's "little houses made of ticky-tacky" than to reno them with a vastly more durable and higher quality.
 
#371
tvrgeek said:
No kidding, balloon framing and knob & tube, lumber not current sizes, asbestos, and lead pipes. No, the way to build houses is in a factory with different materials. Design to order. Bad news to the trades, but it should be easier to replace a 50's "little houses made of ticky-tacky" than to reno them with a vastly more durable and higher quality.
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Did you see panel houses in Moscow? 😉

There was even a movie about some guys who traditionally celebrated New Year's eve in Moscow, got drunk and forgot who of them should fly to Leningrad, and put a wrong guy on a plane. When he woke up, got taxi, told address, come to the house, found his apartment, opened the door by his own key, but found his furniture arranged differently. He went to sleep, until a woman come to the apartment starting yelling that some drunk guy is sleeping in her apartment. 😉

However, later they fell in love, thanks to the same furniture in the same apartment in the same house with the same number on the street with the same name... 😉

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
 
#372
Proof a good idea can be very badly executed. No, I was thinking more in the lines of what is going on in Japan and Scandinavia. Detached homes, custom design but with factory machining. Steel or glue-lam beams, stressed skin panels etc. I had a double-wide back in Colorado that was built far better than my Levit house. Trailer! It was square, tight and solid. Newer ones are far better. There is a company doing modular that meet the hurricane standards, semi-custom.
 
#377
Wavebourn said:
Did you see panel houses in Moscow? 😉

There was even a movie about some guys who traditionally celebrated New Year's eve in Moscow, got drunk and forgot who of them should fly to Leningrad, and put a wrong guy on a plane. When he woke up, got taxi, told address, come to the house, found his apartment, opened the door by his own key, but found his furniture arranged differently. He went to sleep, until a woman come to the apartment starting yelling that some drunk guy is sleeping in her apartment. 😉

However, later they fell in love, thanks to the same furniture in the same apartment in the same house with the same number on the street with the same name... 😉

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
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Irony ....
 
#379
😉

Quite the thing to watch in Moscow at Christmas now ....

Just like "Its a wonderful life" in the US.
 

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