Crazy stuff!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509673,00.html

Is it too late to add XP and Vista to the list? ;o)

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/03/13/dog-rides-comfortably-in-sack-on-runni ng-board/

Wish I had one of these when I got stuck with my Aunt's dalmatian dog after she had her hip surgery a couple years back.........

More questionable inventions:

Screw tops on bottled beverages. Leaves sharp edges often. Put the novelty wall mount bottle opener castings business in the toilet, too.

Plastic bags. I think the should be banned forever. But wait until after I change the litter in the catbox.

EP's What were they thinking? Singles and albums are all we really want.

Derivatives. Look at all the trouble they've caused. I'd be more than happy if derivatives remained a mathematical term for a measure of change at any given point and not a financial instrument whose value is derived from some other asset. Let me digress long enough to remind accountants that engineers take more math, way more science, and develop tools that don't create misery, rather they provide solutions with less work. Now the fiscal misery is going to take an elephant to start rolling back in the other direction. If you think this economic mess is all about ARM's, you need to be a politician or work for Faux news. Long after the re-regulation of Wall Street we'll still have calculus.

CD shrink wrap and those gummy thingies along the top. Now what earthly purpose for both is there?

Any connector (MILSPEC or not) with over 50 pins. Don't go there. It's mean.

Frisbee's that aren't dogproof.

AM Stereo, AM HD C'mon. With 5k bandwidth either side of center, what is the point? Analog or digital, there is only so much poop you can stuff into a sandwich baggie.

Rotary engines. Put it to rest, Mazda. Wankel was a novelty. Let it go.

I once ran across a device called the "Fat Can," advertised in a gadget catalog called "Mature Wisdom." The product description said something like, "put a soup can inside the Fat Can, and unsightly grease drips are kept out of sight." The can was a ceramic cylinder with a cartoon of a pig's head and the lettering "Fat Can." I could never figure out why somebody would want this: since when does canned soup create grease drips? How many people leave half-used soup cans lying around?

Here's another one of my pet peeves: plastic headlight lenses. The plastic becomes yellow and cloudy with age, absorbing light. I just put in a new pair of headlights in my 1992 Hyundai Excel, and the difference is astounding! Car makers should have never abandoned sealed-beam lamps.

Ultra Bright Halogen Headlight Capsules, distracting and annoying! When one turns up behind me I usually just aim my mirrors straight back if they are really bad. Remote electric mirrors are great!!!

Alfredo_t...

Far more impressive than the improvement in your headlamps is the fact that you have a 17-year-old Hyundai that still runs. The typical over/under for Hyundai's of that era was something like 5 years...

The Flobee.

Pet rocks.

AYDS Diet Pills.

Mullets.

Once in a blue moon, I see another Hyundai Excel on the road. Interestingly, the ones that have survived seem to be in pretty good shape. Sadly, most of these cars (period) have been crushed. The closest junkyard Excel that I am aware of is in the Eugene area!

Re: the AYDS pills--I remember seeing the commercials for these in the summer of 1984. I wonder, who was the marketing genius who came up with that name?!?

P.S.: Self-correction -- The AYDS appetite suppressant was on the market long before the term AIDS was coined (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AYDS ). The 1984 ad campaign was likely in response to floundering sales.

Another development that reared its ugly head in the late 20th century and is really big today is the use of non-standard rechargeable batteries. In my recollection, these started to appear when mobile phones became pocket-sized. The battery packs became too small to use the types of cells used in battery packs for cordless phones or two-way radios. A few years later, iPods came on the scene, using built-in batteries not intended to be accessible to the user. All of these products become obsolete once production of the custom-made batteries stops, thereby creating copious amounts of garbage.

Another not-so-great invention is the use of plastic beads as abrasives in soaps. Because the beads are not biodegradable, they pass straight through sewage treatment plants.

iPod batteries are easily replaced and not expensive considering how long they last. The only challenge is opening the case, but most places that sell the batteries send a kit of tools along with the replacement battery.

All consumer electronics, not just the batteries, are a pollution problem. Better recycling methods have been tardy, but better late than never.

I was probably unclear: I didn't mean to say that the batteries themselves are the pollution problem. What I meant to say is that the use of non-standard batteries tends to encourage replacement of the entire product, when everything except the battery is still usable. Thus, the product (phone, mp3 player, etc.) and its battery end up being disposed of, instead of just the battery. Changing the iPod battery may be easy for you, but you have experience working on electronic equipment.

The Cornballer

"Changing the iPod battery may be easy for you, but you have experience working on electronic equipment."

It's easy for anybody! Many "kits" can be found that contain the proper battery as well as a little tool to pull apart the iPod.


No problem

But just try to find an Eveready # 239 (13.5V with a tap at 9V) for an early GE transistor radio!

"But just try to find an Eveready # 239 (13.5V with a tap at 9V) for an early GE transistor radio!"

Got enough room for something simple like this:
(you can probably redesign it for lower current,
but the space needed would probably be the same).

Then any 13.5V battery would work.
http://www.zen22142.zen.co.uk/Circuits/Power/9v2a.htm

The # 239 battery is only about 1"x 1.25"x 2.6", so what I usually do is stuff the shell full of cells removed from a couple of 9V batteries and wire the top plug to the proper series connected cells to obtain the correct voltages.

I suspect that if in 50 years or so, if people collect iPods or cell phones from this era, the way I collect old radios, they will also figure out a way to power them up.

Another "not so great" invention, RCA SelectaVision:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc

Imagine a video disk played with a needle!

We actual had one of these back in 1984. It was a POS and never worked very well. The sound was very inferior to the Betamax that we also had in the living room and there was hardly any titles to choose from. We stopped using it a couple months after we bought it. A very expensive toy my father called it.

Ahh yes, CED--a very subtle reminder of why the VCR was invented ;o)

I've a box of about 20 (or so) old Selectavision records in my folks' basement.......my folks had a CED machine in the mid-late 80s. Most of the CED records I have (if I remember) are pretty much played to death. In fact, one of them currently serves as the face of a wall clock I made when I was a Cascade Cougar........

Didn't hold a candle to the earlier Laserdisc, that's fer dang shor'.