Opposite experience: in 4th grade me and a partner were suppose to make a model church (catholic school). I had made stained glass windows with that fake stained glass paint - arts and crafts stuff, we had made brick walls out of clay on wood...for a couple of 10 year olds it was pretty impressive. Then my partner's rather insisted we finish it at his house. His father scrapped everything we'd done and made it himself in his wood shop, letting us do nothing. Thing is, he had a wood shop but he sucked. Made it out of fake wood paneling and it didn't even make sense. It was just a crappy looking box that in no way resembled a building. I hated that thing. His need to take over stole the creativity from children.

You might think what your kid makes will be better for your help and they'll be happier because of it. But what you end up with will never be theirs. Hope you're really proud of your grade school project.

Yeah that's definitely a big part of the appeal, and I do hope this is a useful invention. Though there are lots of uses for spent grain already. It's a by product, but it seems like more of a commodity than a waste product.

http://modernfarmer.com/2015/08/recycled-brewery-waste/

http://www.craftbeer.com/craft-beer-muses/sustainable-uses-of-spent-grain

Interesting. Does that account for the limits of the human body in terms of (long-term) exposure to G-forces from all that acceleration?

I'm sure we could use nukes to propel a craft to very high speeds very quickly, but I'd wager that limiting the acceleration to human tolerance would require that to be spread out over a much longer span of time.

A quick google search suggests that nobody really knows exactly how much we could handle in terms of long-term exposure to acceleration G-forces:
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/6154/maximum-survivable-long-term-g-forces
(apparently the highest load we've ever tested on humans is 1.5G for 7 days -- without doing any math I'd wager we'd need a lot faster acceleration than that for a lot longer span of time to get to even 1/10th of c)

Is it okay to ask a commenter what about the video they didn't like, if it is not stated in the comment? Not for the sake of arguing, but to learn more about what appeals to them? I am a short filmmaker, so love discussing how to make my craft better by discussing others work.

A matter of scale, distance & speed. (assuming we are talking about electrically driven engines like ion drives or the proposed EM engine.)

If nothing else, the sun gets weaker the further away you get. Out at the edges of the solar system it's almost negligible.

Given that mass directly effects net thrust & fuel range, smaller craft working in the inner solar system may well be better off sticking with solar over a bulky reactor.

Larger and or longer ranged ships should start to favour fusion reactors and such.

Unless of course they manage to miniaturise the fusion apparatus, or perhaps harness quantum effects like matter/anti-matter. etc. etc.

Surface area to volume ratio also starts to shaft solar power the bigger the ship gets too. The panels would have to get exponentially bigger along with the ship/engines.

I couldn't tell you exactly where, but there will be natural tipping points between the practicality of one over the other.

Edit: The calculation would mostly be the ratio of energy produced to mass of the generating apparatus. The point where a fusion reactor (inc it's fuel) can produce more required power per unit of mass than solar cells (and associated gubbins), is the point where it becomes more efficient for most spacecraft.

Though solar still has a clear advantage where indefinite operational duration is a factor. (fusion requires fuel, albeit in small quantities)

I'm a huge python fan to pretty much academic levels, and I hold up this sketch as an example of comedy as a craft, and of Cleese in particular as a craftsman.

Every line has its place. Every word. The premise itself is funny enough, and the way it's developed is great, but what I love the most is the way the core in particular was pared down to balance extracting the most comedy and frustration against the massive repetition.

They did improve on the intro in particular as time went on, and the end works best in the context of the whole episode, but the core remains pretty much unchanged. Not only was it scripted meticulously, it also allows the performers plenty of room to change it around and keep it fresh.

To be fair, there's going to be some prep-time in crafting these speeches. But even if we pretend that there's a total of 9 hours of prep and writing time, it's still a stupidly high hourly rate. And it's not as if she's hurting for cash from her salary as a government official.

Your video, Arts and Crafts - Spray Paint Into A Lawnmower, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Indeed. The only thing notable about this video (other than the bravura performance by Lindsey Stirling) is how evident it is that Freddie Mercury by himself could out-sing three men at the top of their craft.

I've repeatedly discounted your comments, but I simply can't seem to make headway.

The F4E ICE was a modified German version of the F4E. It had much better engines than any other version of the craft, a dedicated WSO, and it still only barely outperformed the F16. The other F4 variants absolutely did not turn better or have a higher rate of climb than the F16.

Dogfighting hasn't been around since WW1? Are you crazy? What would you call the numerous dogfighting techniques developed during WWII? Admittedly there was a drop off in dogfighting during the Korean War, but that was because we were shifting to jets as our primary fighters and people didn't have the speeds worked out. When we went to Vietnam, we found that many times the planes were so fast they were closing into gun range before they could get a missile solution. Hence the creation of the Fighter Weapons School (aka TopGun).

The Air Force couldn't believe it was a skill issue and decided to go a different way, loading more sensors and different cannon onto the airplanes. They still relied on missiles primarily, assuming that dogfighting was DEAD. Well, after some time passed, Navy kill to loss ratios went from 3.7-1 to 13-1 and (SURPRISE) Air Force kill to loss ratios got even worse.

After this, the Air Force quietly created their own DACT program, unwilling to be vocal about how wrong they were. Now, if you primarily play video games about air sorties, you might get the idea that you get a lock a couple of miles before you even see the enemy, confirm the engagement, click a button, and then fly back home. Actual pilots will be glad to set you straight on that, since you might have to get close to the intruding craft and follow them, waiting. What happens when you get close? Dogfights happen.

As far as the capability of the plane, of course it is going to fail tests. But the problem is that, like in the case of the Marine's test, so much money has been invested in this plane that people are ignoring the failures because they are scared the program is going to get shut down. Realistically, that just is going to increase the time this plane takes to get ready for service, increase the costs, and it isn't going to fix the underlying problems in the design of the craft.

I don't know what else I can say. The plane is going to turn out to be a much more expensive version of the F22 and it will most likely quietly be cancelled later down the line like the F22 was. The bad thing is, the government will immediately jump to the next jack of all trades plane and once again we will find it is a master of none.

It has seem a joke for an overly long time. When you can buy every homeless person in this country a $600k mansion for the money we've spent on this thing one has to wonder why are Forget buying a homeless person/family a big mansion, get them a permanent starter home (my part of Ohio, super nice new family homes are $150k, starter homes are well under $100k), job training, and voila, not only far less money spent then is spent on homeless shelters, but they are now trained workers, in a home, and we've still save far more than this program.

Wasn't the F-22 canceled because this was supposed to save us money? That and the inability to export it... which raises the question are we wanting to build the best aircraft for our defense or a plane that we can sell, because those are not super compatible. Yes the F-15 and F-16 are both aging designs, but this program so far doesn't seem to be the answer. Heck, the B-52 fleet is scary old and there doesn't seem to be any real replacements for it.

One of the supposed tasks of the F-35 is to provide a sensor rich environment for other aircraft to operate in, providing these other craft with sensor data, but this task seems best dealt with using drones. Why I question the use of drone strikes (at least as used now), a drone flying though the field providing rich sensor data for the follow up fighters and bombers seems to be a perfect role for drones.

At this point the program is probably only going on because we've spent so much on it that turning back will be seen as a bigger waste than going forward.

I think the X-1 is the first that could pass the speed of sound in normal level flight, without needing to dive to gain speed. That's my understanding at least. It ll depends how the record is stated though, it's almost certainly not the first manned craft to pass the sound barrier as you point out.

*ban
American Craft Beer Reviews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVE4lAYkAgw

Fuck gamergate. They are not, never have and never will be about "ethics in journalism".

They are straight-up misogynistic assholes that make me ashamed to be associated with an art medium/hobby that I've been involved with for over 30 years.

Let's just put this in context. They claim they are against the collusion of game companies and journalists.

First up, the specific instance they targeted was not a conflict of interest. There are absolutely, undoubtedly, HUGE collusions between game reviewers and games, but gg ignored all those because they were for AAA mainstream games that gg likes and instead accused journalists of giving higher review scores to indie games.

Here's a fucking hint: go read some movie reviews, and tell me if you see movie critics favouring indie movies over blockbusters. Of course they do. People who are seriously into something almost always prefer a niche product. See also: craft beer vs budweiser, restaurants vs McDonalds, etc. I could go on.

But here's the cheery on the big cake of poo.

When a games journalist dared to express an opinion against an otherwise well-reviewed game*, what did gamergate do? Applaud their journalistic integrity in offering a dissenting opinion?

Nope: they started a fucking campaign to get the game company to blacklist the reviewer.

The hypocrisy is simply staggering.

And I haven't even mentioned the doxing, the rape threats and so on.

Once again, fuck gamergate. Frankly, they're on a par with the KKK as far as I'm concerned.


* polygon gave Bayonetta 2 a score of 7.5/10 because the reviewer felt it was juvenille and over sexualised. gg started a campaign to get nintendo to block polygon. Nintendo, to their credit, ignored the little fucktards.

What Louis CK and George Carlin and all the greats do is TELL THE TRUTH.

If you tell the truth, you can say ANYTHING.

This isn't true: 'Wouldn't it be funny if somebody raped you?'

And that joke of Louis that began this vid is true. Absolutely true.

What makes these comedians great is that they tell the absolute truth -- and they are funny while they do it.

I tell the truth all the time, but I can't craft a joke or a bit. (I'm funny, but I'm not a writer.)

Louis is moral.