Comments on: Primitive beings walking on the moon

By: D. C. Sessions

D. C. Sessions — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:48:27 +0000

What? How dare you ignore Basalt, Quartz, and eventually the life changing discoveries of Chert and Flint!

I do most sincerely apologize. You are absolutely correct.

By: Og

Og — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:29:50 +0000

bronze, iron, steel, aluminum, titanium alloys, monocrystalline silicon, graphite,

What? How dare you ignore Basalt, Quartz, and eventually the life changing discoveries of Chert and Flint!

… And then was the obsidian age….. Oooh, shiny….

By: D. C. Sessions

D. C. Sessions — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:20:53 +0000

Funny, they could have made piezoelectric lighters any time, but the lighters all had flints and scraper wheels then.

Actually, no. There’s a world of difference between the piezoelectric materials we use now and the ones available 40 years ago.

This underlines my long-standing contention that the applications technologies get all the credit (microelectronics, aircraft, improved automobiles, medical devices …) but that every single one of them for the last few thousand years has been driven by new materials: bronze, iron, steel, aluminum, titanium alloys, monocrystalline silicon, graphite, …

Or piezoelectric composites.

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:29:28 +0000

In another time and in what would seem another world, on a day when two young men were walking on the moon, a very old woman on Long Island would tell reporters that the public excitement over the feat was not so much compared to what she had seen â??on the day they opened the Brooklyn Bridge.â?
The Great Bridge page 542

http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/2005/09/28/the-great-bridge/

By: Caravelle

Caravelle — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:32:50 +0000

I’m worried that the youngsters out there do not understand the momentous nature of this event. So stand still for a minute while I force some wisdom on you.

I was expecting this to be followed by :
THE MOON.
WE WALKED ON IT.
‘Nuff said.

DC Sessions : Laugh if you will at people like my mother who have decided that they’ve absorbed all the technological change that they’re willing to.
When you’ve seen as much as she has in the last 80 years we can talk.

Eh. And here I am hoping that when they do begin interstellar colonization, they’ll allow old geezers like I will be to join.
(on the other hand, I am quite willing to believe I’ll have trouble with what computers or nanotechnology could think up. Not to mention that field nobody is thinking of right now that will revolutionize everything)

Nathan Myers : Funny, they could have made piezoelectric lighters any time, but the lighters all had flints and scraper wheels then.

A cost thing, perhaps ?

By: DuWayne

DuWayne — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:27:49 +0000

I would also note that I have a close friend who actually had to buy a rather large, rambling building in the middle of nowhere, to house his massive collection of “stuff.” Amongst the stuff he stores there, is a tube tester, complete with Rexall logo… And though he no longer has a tee vee that takes them, he also has a bunch of tubes. And to help clarify – three of his bookshelves (he has a fairly substantial library) are shelves out of a Rexall store that closed right around the time I was born…

By: DuWayne

DuWayne — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:15:31 +0000

All right Bill, the next logical question would be; Did you sharpen utility blades? If so, did you get really pissed when you (or worse, someone else) either snapped one or chipped the blade badly?

By: Bill James

Bill James — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 03:00:08 +0000

Absolutely.

By: The Science Pundit

The Science Pundit — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:56:14 +0000

In my neck of the woods you pulled all the tubes out and took them to the Rexall drugstore where they had a tube tester and the cabinet below was filled with replacements. Look up your tube type, insert tube into the proper socket, set the dials accordingly, press the test button and read the meter divided into bad, weak or good.

Did you also change your own points and sparkplugs? 😉

By: Bill James

Bill James — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:38:30 +0000

Greg L: “Oh, I do remember the TV repair guy. There were actually truck driving around that were TV Repair Guy trucks…”

In my neck of the woods you pulled all the tubes out and took them to the Rexall drugstore where they had a tube tester and the cabinet below was filled with replacements. Look up your tube type, insert tube into the proper socket, set the dials accordingly, press the test button and read the meter divided into bad, weak or good.