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b0nes posted:Don't forget about radium suppositories. The early twentieth century was a pioneering time when men and women were truly bold enough to test every new discovery by shoving it up their asses.
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Oct 28, 2012 20:37
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Sagebrush posted:Titanium isn't classified as a heavy metal, it's entirely non-toxic (though it does burn spectacularly as a powder) and the specific compound you're thinking of, titanium dioxide, is so harmless that it is regularly put in food and candy as a whitener. Silly me not looking up what the definition of a heavy metal is. I know titanium is harmless though, because it's what you put in tableware glazes and toothpaste. What I was trying to say was most ceramics are made from harmful things, which they are. The silica in clay is abrasive on your lungs if clay is allowed to dry out and become air-bourne, lead makes pretty glazes, and so on. Glazers in factories used to make their whole families sick because they'd be up to their arms in glaze all day and take home glaze powder on their clothes.
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Oct 28, 2012 20:43
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redmercer posted:Man, I bet things were really terrible until they figured out how to make a condom without any seams. Lambskin condoms were used for centuries, so they must work.
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Oct 28, 2012 20:59
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Jedit posted:Lambskin condoms were used for centuries, so they must work. Lambskin (lamb intestine, actually) has tiny pores in it that are too small for sperm to fit through, but big enough for viruses and some bacteria to enter, so they don't actually prevent STDs, just pregnancy. Also they smell kind of weird.
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Oct 28, 2012 21:03
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They're a lifesafer if the woman has a latex allergy though. Also if she doesn't have any STDs.
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Oct 28, 2012 21:06
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baw posted:They're a lifesafer if the woman has a latex allergy though. Polyurethane or polyisoprene are better alternatives in that case.
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Oct 28, 2012 21:12
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madlilnerd posted:Silly me not looking up what the definition of a heavy metal is. I know titanium is harmless though, because it's what you put in tableware glazes and toothpaste. What I was trying to say was most ceramics are made from harmful things, which they are. The silica in clay is abrasive on your lungs if clay is allowed to dry out and become air-bourne, lead makes pretty glazes, and so on. Glazers in factories used to make their whole families sick because they'd be up to their arms in glaze all day and take home glaze powder on their clothes. Really that's true of a lot of hazardous old materials/processes. They pose no real danger to the end consumer in the targeted product, but the people making them in contact with volatile forms or inhaling powders and whatever all day were in real danger. Similarly, until the 1950s or so X-ray fitting devices were common in shoe stores. Put your foot in, look right in and see how it fits you! People today will gasp and say "oh, all those customers in danger from radiation!" and while it wasn't exactly healthy it wasn't that dangerous if you kept kids from just fooling around with the machine all day: the main risk was to employees who were working next to poorly shielded X-ray machines all day, every day.
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Oct 28, 2012 21:14
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baw posted:They're a lifesafer if the woman has a latex allergy though. And if she enjoys haggis. I knew that lambskin condoms didn't stop STDs, but as that wasn't the original purpose of the item I didn't feel it worth mentioning.
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Oct 28, 2012 21:17
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Toast Museum posted:Polyurethane or polyisoprene are better alternatives in that case. Polyurethane sucks, it's crinkly and doesn't stretch. Polyisoprene is great.
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Oct 28, 2012 21:17
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Thulsa Doom posted:The early twentieth century was a pioneering time when men and women were truly bold enough to test every new discovery by shoving it up their asses. Didn't the dude behind Kellogg think that all his products would be best used shot up the rear end? For a good hunk of modern life we were pretty sure, as a culture, that the secret to immortality was just finding the right mixture of something going up your butt.
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Oct 28, 2012 21:53
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I can't fathom the idea of wrapping a bunch of lamb intestine around my dong and going to work. That's just so grody.
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Oct 28, 2012 22:02
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Glitterbomber posted:Didn't the dude behind Kellogg think that all his products would be best used shot up the rear end? The Mayans are known to have practiced the art of the beer enema. Sticking things up our butts goes back a long time.
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Oct 28, 2012 22:04
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Killer robot posted:Similarly, until the 1950s or so X-ray fitting devices were common in shoe stores. Put your foot in, look right in and see how it fits you! People today will gasp and say "oh, all those customers in danger from radiation!" and while it wasn't exactly healthy it wasn't that dangerous if you kept kids from just fooling around with the machine all day: the main risk was to employees who were working next to poorly shielded X-ray machines all day, every day. Bill Bryson mentions this in his book on his childhood, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid". He also talks about frolicking in the clouds of pesticide that used to get crop-dusted over his neighbourhood  It's a really good and very funny book.
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Oct 28, 2012 22:06
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HonorableTB posted:I can't fathom the idea of wrapping a bunch of lamb intestine around my dong and going to work. That's just so grody. Goal: Have sex Limitation: No baby Supplies: (1) Woman (2) Sheep
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Oct 28, 2012 22:10
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Factory Factory posted:Goal: Have sex Yea, I mean Welsh figured out a different method, but I can see how we stuck with what we had.
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Oct 28, 2012 22:13
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HonorableTB posted:I can't fathom the idea of wrapping a bunch of lamb intestine around my dong and going to work. That's just so grody. It does sound a bit weird, but hey, weirder than putting that stuff in your mouth? 
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Oct 28, 2012 22:15
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DNova posted:The Mayans are known to have practiced the art of the beer enema. Sticking things up our butts goes back a long time. And then they got really bombed and played the longest practical joke ever. madlilnerd posted:Bill Bryson mentions this in his book on his childhood, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid". He also talks about frolicking in the clouds of pesticide that used to get crop-dusted over his neighbourhood Everyone should read Bill Bryson's books, he's a phenomenal writer, but also the x-ray machine shows up in Stephen King's It, which really confused me when I read it because I couldn't imagine how something like that would exist. But apparently they did, so never doubt the past, I guess.
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Oct 28, 2012 22:42
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By the way, back on the subject of pneumatic tubes: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/health/upmc-constructing-underground-pneumatic-tubes-to-link-hospitals-to-new-lab-659479/
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Oct 28, 2012 22:57
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Glitterbomber posted:Yea, I mean Welsh figured out a different method, but I can see how we stuck with what we had. I know this is contributing to a derail, but I will run the risk of probation to tell you just how much this made me laugh. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 28, 2012 23:31
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Everyone should read Bill Bryson's books, he's a phenomenal writer, but also the x-ray machine shows up in Stephen King's It, which really confused me when I read it because I couldn't imagine how something like that would exist. But apparently they did, so never doubt the past, I guess. He's also full of poo poo. His Brief History of whatever the gently caress says that glass is a liquid. It might seem a bit nitpicky, but a modern science writer saying that sort of thing is really stupid.
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Oct 28, 2012 23:37
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:Generally if you have to charge it by holding it up to light first, it's not generating its own energy (just absorbing energy and re-emitting it, basically) and therefore isn't also generating any harmful radiation. As an owner of these, they are not at all bright. Pretty much can't even see the glow in anything less than near-total darkness. Also I think they emit alpha particles as most of their decay? I can't remember.
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Oct 28, 2012 23:38
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AlternateAccount posted:As an owner of these, they are not at all bright. Pretty much can't even see the glow in anything less than near-total darkness. Also I think they emit alpha particles as most of their decay? I can't remember. Tritium emits beta particles (the whole atom is lighter than an alpha particle), but they're very low energy as beta goes, and can basically be blocked by skin, so like alpha emitters it's only dangerous if ingested. Though they're lower mass than alpha particles still, so are less dangerous when they are ingested. Basically, as radioactive materials go it's as benign as it gets.
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Oct 28, 2012 23:43
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madlilnerd posted:Bill Bryson mentions this in his book on his childhood, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid". He also talks about frolicking in the clouds of pesticide that used to get crop-dusted over his neighbourhood When I was growing up in Florida in the 70s  , they used to spray for mosquitos using a truck fogger. We'd all wait around for the truck as the driver would always throw out handfuls for candy for us. /csb
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Oct 29, 2012 00:12
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spog posted:I've heard a complain from occasional PS3 users that everytime they want to play it game, it takes 20 mins to start, because their system always insists on downloading and installing a non-skippable software update. So many pages ago, but this is painfully true. Why are their updates so slow?
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Oct 29, 2012 01:20
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Despite my love for it, I would say the Famicom Disk System is rather obsolete. Basically: it's an add-on disk drive system for the Famicom [the Japanese NES]. Something interesting about the system is how different some games for it are than their NES counterparts; for instance, Metroid for the FDS has savegames thanks to being able to write to the disk [as opposed to using a battery backup solution inside the cart, which I assume hadn't been developed yet when Metroid came out]. And one of the most famous differences, a number of titles had remarkably different music than their NES versions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txF7fZeOuyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxTvoTeoBNc One advantage that disks had over carts is that disks could be rewritten. Nintendo set up Disk Writer stations around Japan which allowed people to pop a disk in and write a game to it from a big selection of them. Kind of like a proto-Red Box kiosk, if Red Box made you provide your own DVD.  I myself have a Sharp Twin Famicom, which is a kickass little device which has a built in Famicom and FDS all in one package:  [not mine, but I have the same model/color] Pretty awesome. Plus, it uses actual Nintendo hardware, which comes in handy when the inevitable happens: The disk drive fails. Y'see, the FDS disk drive is belt driven. The belt is made from a material which is hard to describe; I'm sure at one point, the belt in mine was a solid, durable, flexible-yet-tight piece of rubber. However, when I bought it a year or so ago, the drive didn't work [very very common when buying FDS/Twin Famis], so I popped it open to replace the belt only to find that the belt had turned into some semi-solid semi-fluid horrific mess all over the pulleys it was attached to. Also, it stains the poo poo out of everything and is impossible to get out; I'm glad I plan to replace the carpet in my home office anyway.  I finally replaced the belt today, and come to find out I didn't align something right inside, so it still won't read disks.  So moral of the story: be glad, kids, that the BDROM in your PS3 isn't belt driven!
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Oct 29, 2012 01:49
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Code Jockey posted:Despite my love for it, I would say the Famicom Disk System is rather obsolete. That looks like something you would have seen on Star Trek TOS.
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Oct 29, 2012 01:55
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Mister Kingdom posted:That looks like something you would have seen on Star Trek TOS. Ha! I wouldn't be too surprised. That reminds me, I've been re-watching Red Dwarf since Season 10 just came out, and early in Season 1 I spotted this:   The Commodore 64: So awesome, it's used to control spacecraft. Obviously the Jupiter Mining Corp doesn't consider it to be obsolete, even if we might.
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Oct 29, 2012 02:01
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Jedit posted:And if she enjoys haggis. This made me laugh out loud entirely too loudly, thank you.
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Oct 29, 2012 03:39
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redmercer posted:Man, I bet things were really terrible until they figured out how to make a condom without any seams. A condom with the seam in is a counter-productive idea.
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Oct 29, 2012 03:43
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t_violet posted:When I was growing up in Florida in the 70s I grew up in swampy mostly-rural Florida and my parents still live there, and they still spray for mosquitoes using a truck (and a low-flying helicopter) though now they do it at like 10 PM at night (so nobody sees it and freaks out at the chemtrails  )I've never gotten candy despite being blasted with poison by one driving by a few times
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Oct 29, 2012 03:54
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HonorableTB posted:I can't fathom the idea of wrapping a bunch of lamb intestine around my dong and going to work. That's just so grody. The egyptians rubbed crocodile turds all over their wee obelisks. You be drat thankful for your lamb guts.
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Oct 29, 2012 03:58
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Speaking of radium suppositories: 
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Oct 29, 2012 04:01
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Killer robot posted:Really that's true of a lot of hazardous old materials/processes. They pose no real danger to the end consumer in the targeted product, but the people making them in contact with volatile forms or inhaling powders and whatever all day were in real danger.
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Oct 29, 2012 04:35
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MadScientistWorking posted:Nope. The formation of the FDA as we know it actually resulted from these inane products actually killing off some rather influential figures in the most gruesome way possible. I believe it specifically was someone's jaw falling off. I was bored so I looked it up: a number of different things lead up to it, including Upton Sinclair's writings, the Elixir Sulfanilamide incident in which 100 people were poisoned by an additive to a drug and died, and what you were probably thinking of: the death of Eben Byers, an industrialist who was prescribed a radium drink to fix his injured arm. Wikipedia posted:The Wall Street Journal ran a headline reading "The Radium Water Worked Fine until His Jaw Came Off" after his death Man the early 1900's were great
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Oct 29, 2012 04:47
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I ran into this at work today. It's our original keyboard for the rail controllers (I work for a subway system) to interact with our SCADA system. I thought it just looked kinda neat:   
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Oct 29, 2012 05:16
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I miss big chunky keyboards.
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Oct 29, 2012 05:21
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It looks like a control panel on a 60's sci-fi show, in the best way.
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Oct 29, 2012 05:25
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I wish the original SCADA servers were still around to play with. I guess they were taken away when they upgraded in the late 90's. Which takes me to the fact that our current systems for SCADA and Train Control are in use but obsolete. It's all DEC Alpha stuff. It's wonderful.
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Oct 29, 2012 05:34
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MadScientistWorking posted:Nope. The formation of the FDA as we know it actually resulted from these inane products actually killing off some rather influential figures in the most gruesome way possible. I believe it specifically was someone's jaw falling off. That was Radithor, one of the radium water products of the 1920s. It's not really related to the many things that endanger workers far more than consumers though, like radium watches or careless X-ray use or various powdered chemicals. On old keyboards with lots of extra modes and keys I do like this one:  Ctrl, Meta, Super, and Hyper! 
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Oct 29, 2012 05:42
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Killer robot posted:That was Radithor, one of the radium water products of the 1920s. It's not really related to the many things that endanger workers far more than consumers though, like radium watches or careless X-ray use or various powdered chemicals. Ooooooh that looks like an APL keyboard. APL was this weird early functional programming language from the 70s that used mathematical notation with a non-ASCII character set to act on vectors and matrices (the code points used for lower case in ASCII were for those math symbols in APL).
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Oct 29, 2012 05:54
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