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Scalpel Jones everyday carry titanium scalpel Kickstarter - video and photo
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My question is WHY? Is he a surgeon who does impromptu amputations at cocktail parties?
While a scalpel is obviously sharp, the blade is awfully fragile by pocket knife standards. In fact, I would call it dangerous to use for typical pocket knife tasks.
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Yeah, it's definitely a "lite" cutting implement.
It could find use among non-traditional knife carriers, people who have occasional light cutting tasks, or those who believe that social pressure discourages from them carrying a "knife".
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Jack the Ripper would have loved it. He was into spontaneous bouts of organ removal.
The titanium handle in such a small tool screams "impress your yuppie buddies with your threatening, hi-tech knife" rather than any significant weight economization. I'd be willing to bet this guy owns a sword cane and probably a muff pistol as well.
I've walked a lot of sidewalks and I have yet to encounter a body, dead or alive, in immediate need of surgery or dissection.
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I think your fragility point about the blade is really critical, and that if people have only a single cutting tool on them, they'll be tempted to perform dangerously heavy cutting tasks with such a thin blade.
Agreed, "titanium" may have helped with the Kickstarter publicity. If you want to check out a shady Kickstarter campaign, look at this gem: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...rgy-generator/
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/h...ickstarter.png
Notice how he sets the goal really low (€300). Once he reaches that number (fairly quickly), he automatically receives the funding, and disappears, leaving the funders to complain in the comments.
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Yep, that one reeks of fraud.
Selling people "free" energy gadgets is easy. Like most scams, the mark already wants to believe in it, so much of the selling has already been done for you.
As long as we have a public willing to believe in 6 horsepower shop vacs running on 120 volt, 15 amp circuits, we can sell them anything. Ask the typical 30-something adult the difference between power and energy or, better yet, how the electricity for his save-the-planet Tesla will be generated.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
mklotz
or, better yet, how the electricity for his save-the-planet Tesla will be generated.
I actually had this exact experience. Blank stares. It's very difficult to tactfully say: "It's really a coal car."
Along the lines of fascinating (but still possible) energy ideas, Peter Todd, a bitcoin developer, commented yesterday about transmitting solar power with bitcoin.
The concept revolves around harvesting solar power in space. This one is somewhat of a reach, but within reason, and we're working on it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_...nology_program).
Anyway, the idea is that you harvest the solar power in space, and you use that power to mine bitcoin on-location. Then, instead of transferring the harvested energy back to Earth, you just transfer the bitcoin.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jon
I actually had this exact experience. Blank stares. It's very difficult to tactfully say: "It's really a coal car."
I wonder if they know how much radioactive thorium is released when coal is burned. They're all scared of cow flatulence; radioactivity must paralyze them.
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That "scalpel " is close to the stupidest thing I've ever seen. That certainly won't fit in my pocket and wouldn't be good on my belt loop either, never mind the fragility. My most used tool on my key chain is my Letherman Micra. I use the scissors most, with the blade second and the tweezers for getting out metal slivers.
I get you Marv, and Jon are skeptical of electric cars and seem to be fans of petroleum. We don't get our power from coal. But check this out:
Californians are paying billions for power they don’t need - Los Angeles Times
Since we got our Volt over the total lifespan of the car so far we've been averaging 160mpg. With our solar array which was under engineered, we ended up owing PG&E $600 for the year. It was very overcast here. But there are so many advantages to plugin hybrid. Like no maintence compared to gas. After 14mo decided to do the first oil change even though it had 50% oil life left. This is after 20,000mi because the electric range is 50+mi which most times we never use the gas.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jon
I think your fragility point about the blade is really critical, and that if people have only a single cutting tool on them, they'll be tempted to perform dangerously heavy cutting tasks with such a thin blade.
Agreed, "titanium" may have helped with the Kickstarter publicity. If you want to check out a shady Kickstarter campaign, look at this gem:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...rgy-generator/
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/h...ickstarter.png
Notice how he sets the goal really low (€300). Once he reaches that number (fairly quickly), he automatically receives the funding, and disappears, leaving the funders to
complain in the comments.
Pretty sneaky way to scam people out of their money. I wonder if he actually came up with the images himself, or copied those from some legitimate research project. Even a bit of practical sense you can sniff out how dubious it is when he talks about the power generation plants being converted over.
Thanks for posting so we can be aware of the shady business of some of these people. I wonder how they sleep at night....
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Not to Diss this too much. I already have a folding scalpel from my days working at a Feed Store. Much cheaper and pretty short when folded. Plated steel butwhat the hell I can carry it!
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Just another pointless youtube video.
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To be fair: electric cars certainly have their use, especially as the technology advances, much as I enjoy poking fun at them. Especially in crowded urban areas, it's reasonable that we would seek to separate the polluting generation of power from the daily use of that power for transportation. If you're harvesting solar power from your roof or property, for use in powering your transportation, your position is much stronger.
But the gap between the physical reality of power generation and use, and the public's perception of such, is something that our society needs to communicate more honestly among its members. The "green" in green technology is too often the "green" in money, or the "green" in naivete, and it damages the reputations of the entities who are genuinely working to advance our technology in that area.
Nevertheless, the "Magnet Energy" Kickstarter is priceless. You can abstract the phrasing to see how the scammer was savvy enough to capitalize on the current state of the enviro-energy-zeitgeist. It almost reads like this:
Something something energy. Something something environment. With your help, we can change everything.
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I agree there is all kinds of disinformation on all sides. It takes a lot of background to understand what is being proposed in fund me etc. There is a huge scam in the idea we still have to base our economy around petroleum. Especially when it's not really providing jobs and not being sold domestically. When old paradigms do nothing but keep things as they are that is where your "green" really is.
We don't live in a heavily populated area so I'm somewhat perplexed by your reference to use. I don't know how you drive but having the ability to go 50+mi on electricity means we fill the 8gal gas tank once every 2,400mi. And this doesn't mean it's a little funky looking can barely get down the road bathtub looking thing that only goes as fast as a golf cart. It drives just like a regular car, and when it switches to gas it's seamless.
The underlying reason for HMT, IMHO is self reliance and not be totally reliant on the real big brother, corporations who control what we can buy and seek monopoly while destroying competition. When it's possible the next step for us is get a home battery system(thanks to Tesla). That will cut out this crap of us selling our excess power to PG&E at a discount rate and then getting charged full pop when we draw off the grid.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
C-Bag
We don't live in a heavily populated area so I'm somewhat perplexed by your reference to use.
The pro-electric car argument becomes stronger with increased localized population density. Even if electric vehicles were 10 times more polluting than petroleum-powered vehicles (they're not), it might still be reasonable to use them in densely populated areas, akin to how electric vehicles are used in large warehouses. It doesn't always make sense to release the pollution created by combustion in the exact same spot that this combustion's resultant power is utilized for locomotion.
Another example is charcoal grills. If you live in a rural area, and charcoal grills were outlawed (for reasons other than wildfire danger), it would seem unreasonable.
But let's say you live in a skyscraper in New York City, and charcoal grills were outlawed (this is more common in cities). Perfectly reasonable. You can't have 100 floors of occupants above your head, any of whom are allowed to operate charcoal grills whenever they want; there would be a constant danger of errant hot coals falling from overhead.
Electric cars might make more sense if they were sold as package deals; you buy the car plus the solar panels in one package.
