The train moving from left to right totally PWNED the other one.

>> ^chingalera:

and to alllllll the other stars out there (and that's a heapin' shitload of em) that could give a fuck about Obama/Romney/politics??....There's the folks who have a clue and are doing something for humanity....They are keeping their political delusions to themselves instead of using status as some fairy-gas or agenda....
I'd like to see both "candidates" on one of those whistle stop campaigns except there would be only a locomotive engine covered in C4 for each candidate and they would be moving towards each other on the same track, throttle wide open-

and to alllllll the other stars out there (and that's a heapin' shitload of em) that could give a fuck about Obama/Romney/politics??....There's the folks who have a clue and are doing something for humanity....They are keeping their political delusions to themselves instead of using status as some fairy-gas or agenda....

I'd like to see both "candidates" on one of those whistle stop campaigns except there would be only a locomotive engine covered in C4 for each candidate and they would be moving towards each other on the same track, throttle wide open-

>> ^ReverendTed:

Got an eyebrow raised at the diesel engine a few cars back. Is it there as a backup? Being transported?
No, Steam locomotive is just trying to run away. That's not a whistle you are hearing, it's the locomotive screaming for help, trying not to get run over, begging the diesel one to slow down.

Yup, that is just a normal coal burning industrial locomotive. Burners were on real high, belches out a lot of smoke when you do that...though it is always more smoke that you are used to seeing. Most trains now are diesel-electric. Trains are actually realllllly sophisticated. When you moving around thousands of tons, you need very high tech braking and transmissions systems. I used to live in coal mining state (West Virginia) and got to hear lots of train tails as a result.

Must be a beast of a locomotive engine to be able to pull all those vehicles!

Thank you for the promote.

In reply to this comment by legacy0100:
*promote locomotive predilection

*promote locomotive predilection

>> ^Trancecoach:

Yeah, you're right.. These guys are clearly lying. In fact, they're not even fire fighters! They're actors working on scale.. (how else would they know what it's like to be on a movie set?)
>> ^EvilDeathBee:
I dunno about you guys, but i'm convinced. This is such a conspiracy, there is no other explanation at all.

Everybody knows that an approaching tornado sounds like an oncoming locomotive. And a path of destruction it leaves behind also looks like a train plowed through. Shouldn't there also be a claim that it's a conspiracy and they are hiding all the rogue trains while blaming tornadoes?

These firefighters might not be lying or actors, but I would not necessary take their post-traumatic descriptions of the event as facts. They just lived through perhaps their most extreme experience of their lives with 2 giant buildings collapsing around them. While they might be trained and have experience with fires, nobody there had any training or preparation or prior experience on how an 110 story building hit by a plane would collapse and what it would sound and feel like.

When the south tower started collapsing i was standing at exactly 40.705426,-74.004928 that was literally in front of the an entrance to our office building(it was demolished since). When it started collapsing from my vantage point it looked like the top simply toppled over. That was my experience of the event. Was it accurate? No. But everybody on the street at that time saw it that way.

Wow. Boston Dynamics never ceases to impress. Bipeds are useful because they are so adaptive. Further, this accomplishment demonstrates something deeper. Rather than resolving the unexpected through a more robust form factor, they've demonstrated that we can accomplish similar environmental flexibility through improvement of the control law.

Bipedal locomotion has been a holy grail in robotics for that reason. While it seems so effortless to us, it's one of the most computationally intensive things we do. It's arguably much more complex than playing chess, doing math, or any of the other metrics traditionally considered AI benchmarks.

Regarding the usefulness compared to other designs (e.g. hexapods, or treaded robots), bipeds tend to be able to maintain a higher center of gravity over a smaller base of support. That's useful in a number of tasks. Further, it isn't as if people aren't working on other robotic form factors including snakes, swimmers, flying robots, and x-apods.

All of the videos of humanoid/walking robots remind me of a mechanics/metalworking teacher I had who explained how the human body is an incredibly bad design for industrial use. His demonstration of a human-shaped crane, bending at the hips and legs to pick up heavy objects, was memorable.

I can see some household/servant-type applications for these but their usefulness seems to end there. Locomotion by tracks and/or wheels would be superior in almost every situation.

Boston Dynamics has done a lot of cool research with walking robots:

She needs to be rockin' some Locomotive Breath if she's got Ian's flute up there.

>> ^rychan:

The advice might be good but the reasoning they're using to justify it is false. Things are much more complicated than they make out.
Why not take their third grade reasoning to the extreme and propose that you should run with zero bounce? If you tried this you'd find it requires very unnatural and inefficient movements.


Things don't need to be complicated if you don't go into the metabolism side of things. Running is different from walking in that both of you feet are off the ground at the same time. You're basically flying through the air most of the time, or should be. Bouncing too much shows that you make contact with the ground for too long. By simply landing on the balls of your feet (not your toes or, worse, your heels) without trying to push yourself forward (i.e. with legs straight down under you at the instant your whole foot is contacting the ground and then pulling the foot up instead of pushing out with your toes), you can create a spring like reaction in your leg muscle that will give you just enough vertical energy to stay level with the ground, reducing the bounce to a theoretical minimum of zero. What makes you advance forward is your previous momentum combined with gravity making your slightly forward-leaning body fall at an angle (the lean will need to be more pronounced the faster you want to run). With good form, you can easily create a very constant stride without bounce since you do not rely on your leg muscles to propel yourself, but only to keep you up in the air for the longest possible proportion of time (resulting in less friction, more energy transfer from gravity, etc.). Look at horses : their hind legs are bent backwards for propulsion, yet they still have no bounce (we feel a bounce because we ride in the middle, but in absolutes they do not bounce). Plus, their front legs always hit the ground at a 90 degree angle right under them. In human terms, the front legs are our legs, the hind legs are our slight forward lean. If we had not adapted this way, we'd either be running like kangaroos, i.e. by actually bouncing, or we'd not be able to run at all, like monkeys.

tl;dr : landing on the balls of your feet keeps you in the air at a stable, constant height; leaning slightly forward allows gravity to pull you forward.

Walking though is very different. Here you want the pendulum effect created by the arms to conserve energy, but the same principle applies for maximum efficiency : land with the legs at 90 degrees to the ground, under your center of gravity and don't push with your toes. Of course there are ways to walk/run faster with less efficiency, it all depends whether you're in a marathon or a race.

>> ^Sagemind:

After ripping my knee out in a dirt-bike accident (think snapping a chicken wing in two), I don't run.
Having said that, I think it's crazy that man has reduced a basic function of the human body down to scientific knowhow! Should we tell our tribal ancestors they've been doing it all wrong all this time??


On the contrary, they're the ones who have been doing it right all along. Mass consumerism + fad marketing destroyed our feet with "running" shoes. Plus, scientists have assumed for a long time that everyone knows instinctively how to run properly. They were wrong. Just as we learn how to walk we must learn how to run. Some can learn on their own, some copy others like Angua1 and some just can't run or end up copying bad running forms from people who "unlearned" how to run thanks to padded "running" shoes. Our ancestors learned how to run properly because for them it was a vital skill, just like using a bow, a knife or a sling. Plus they didn't have padded shoes, medical treatment or motorized locomotion so running badly was not an option if they were to survive long enough to reproduce.

That said, the video is bullshit. Go look for the POSE method of running for accurate information. This method also addresses the crossover problems.

No doubt Yogi, no doubt. I just wonder if being a pitcher might actually favor the female biology once it buds. Most sports women do have the disadvantage do to muscle mass, but pitching is more or an art mixed with physical ability, and that ability is more about using your bodies locomotion rather that its prominence. I am no baseball expert or kinesiologist, so it would intrigue me if women were actually better suited to be pitchers because their lady lumps give them more inertial mass to put behind their centrifugal energy.

Well a locomotive weighs about 125-250 tons...