As a kid I was interested in typing and printing so I taught myself to blind type - something that I did not foresee would become so valuable in this computer era. I can visually scan a few words, then continue typing while looking away and talking about something else in a different language. It sounds fantastic, but many typists can talk about something else while copying a document. There are some who claim that they can copy a document and not know the content.
That is one hectic skill bro. My wife (now my ex) had a stroke about 15 years ago. The stroke removed her ability to understand language, either written or spoken. She used to type around 48 wpm but after her stroke she got scores of between 85 and 95 wpm with 100% accuracy. The neurologist explained that she no longer needed to understand (actually couldn’t understand) what she was typing so the information had a much shorter “route” to travel through her brain.
Doing that kind of typing with your brain intact must mean that you are either a half-wit or a genius >:D I think everyone here (except maybe Teleo) will go with “genius” for now. ;D
Thanks for the compliment.
I don’t think it is that exceptional.
Sheesh… makes sense though, way back then I was a typist (a TOUCHTYPE typist no less), and I’d simply “switch off”. I never could remember what I typed and had to proofread the letters backward in order to pick out any spelling errors (there usually were none). Go figure I’d switch my brain off to do braindead work…
It’s probably an indication of how little we understand (xcept teleo of course)the workings of the human brain. Some people with autism are brilliant at certain things while idiot savants are still a puzzle.
My point exactly! ;D
This is a very interesting point. One way to improve performance might be to suppress certain parts of the brain that interfere with the functioning of other parts. I can imagine a future where we might only activate certain portions of the brain which we require for specific tasks and allow the other parts to remain dormant, it would sure beat being bored.
The Space Shuttle and the Horse’s Rear End
Say friend, did you know that the US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches.
That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that’s the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.
I see, but why did the English build them like that?
Because the first railway lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.
Well, why did they use that gauge in England?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did their wagons use that odd wheel spacing?
Because, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads. Because that’s the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads?
The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The Roman roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts?
The original ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by the wheels of Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.
And the motto of the story is Specifications and bureaucracies live forever.
So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war-horses.
So, just what does this have to do with the exploration of space?
Well, there’s an interesting extension of the story about railroad gauge and horses’ behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.
The railroad from the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.
So a major design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was originally determined by the width of a horse’s ass.
The trick is hype and obfuscation. I’ll put good money on it that the hidden “central pendulum” draws from an external power source to keep the whole contrivance going. Why do I say this? First, because it’s hidden and there’s no sound reason why that should be so. In fact, the brass upright and casing at the base would only decouple the central pendulum from the external magnets that supposedly keep it oscillating. Second, because when you watch the device in operation, there are lots of things happening at the same time, several of which entail energy losses, such as the rolling friction of the ball on the circular rail, friction in the pendulum pivots, heat and collision losses after the ball triggers each of the three actuators, air friction on moving parts, magnetic hysteresis, etc.
I’m not in the least worried that this guy has found a way around the laws of thermodynamics. And, contrary to what the video’s narrator asserts, I highly doubt he’s a mathematician in any meaningful sense of that word.
'Luthon64
Easy enough to make wild claims of qualifications; people do it all the time. Years ago I ran into “Dr” Douglas Forbes, inventor of the Human PIN Code. I see there was even a thread about it here:
http://forum.skeptic.za.org/general-skepticism/human-pin-code/
He got his, er, Ph.D. from a diploma mill and couldn’t refer me to his doctoral thesis. I even wrote to the diploma mill in question, only to be told that they don’t just give out copies of students’ theses.
He made all manner of wild claims, such as that he held a patent on a mini black hole for garbage disposal and that he “solved Pythagoras’ Octagon Theory” (whatever the fuck that is). And people fell for it hook, line and sinker. For a while there he was something of a minor celebrity.
I learned about him from an excited friend who is a very decent person, but jeez, she’s as gullible as they come. She even did all his expensive courses to become a PIN Code practitioner herself. Eventually switched to face reading, of which she is now a hugely successful practitioner, and indeed she has achieved significantly more celebrity status than “Dr.” Forbes could dream of.
If you want your children to thrive: Teach them how to lie with a straight face and eschew pesky morality stuff. It’s too late for me.
Recently someone giddily pointed out to me that their “Vape” only releases “2 or 3 chemicals”, unlike cigarettes with their “thousands”, and are thus safe. Pontificating on whether pure Arsenic is as dangerous as the thousands of chemicals in a Banana … but we never got that far.