Funny Pictures. Safe For Work, and Safe For The Kids Too.

speaks for itself.

 

The Eye of Argon

This beautiful, Queens' English novel is a must-have for every fantasy reader. Read it. I know you wanna.

 

It might take some time to read (not too much, but the slow-reading ones will need a few moments), but I second your words. If you have time guys, read this thing.

 

That is one of the most notorious pieces of writing in the English Language. Actually, THE most notorious criminal writer was a fellow named Edward George Bullwer-Lytton, probably most remembered for his coming up with the phrase "The pen is mightier than the sword." The opening of his novel, "Paul Clifford" is a crime work that will live on forever in infamy history. Actually, it's not HIS writing which is infamous, but all the bad works his writing has been linked to, because of his opening phrase "IT was a dark and stormy night".

I don't know if you are aware of it, but there has been an annual writing competition, inspired by the opening phrase of Bullwer-Lytton's "Paul Clifford", and is named, oddly enough, "The Bullwer-Lytton Fiction Contest",
They've collected many of the best entries to the contest in an entertaining collection of books. I've only read the first two of them -- they really aren't the kind of books that you read cover to cover, but rather, you are likely to peruse random pages at your leisure. The first book is called, "It was a Dark and Stormy Night: The Best from the Bullwer-Lytton Contest".

If you ever go to a Science Fiction convention (not generally at any of the media conventions like Comicon), there is a popular panel that keeps showing up at some of them where they discuss the most humorous of publisher's rejected works (they do keep the author's names anonymous, in case you were worried). You can recognize the panel because it often will contain the phrase "Slush Pile" in the title. The panelists generally include the people who actually have to read through just about everything that they receive as submissions. These panels, at least for me, have been highlights of many a convention. Worldcons are where I first encountered this kind of panel. They are hilarious. They don't just read from the rejected submissions, but sometimes they have stories to go along with it (such as some of the unique ways that authors have come up with to call attention to their work, some of which are REALLY bad ideas. Anyway, they are always great panels that will leave you laughing so hard that you'll have to gasp for air.

 

Yes, that much I know. But thank you for the explanation, I only knew the generals and not all of what you wrote.

 

Linked on the Bullwer-Lytton site was the following interesting quiz regarding how well you can distinguish between the writing of Charles Dickens and Edward George Bullwer-Lytton: http://reverent.org/bulwer-dickens.html
I took the test and got less than half right (not a very impressive achievement, but I'll admit to my failure). The analysis of the results are fairly interesting, and indicate that I'm not that unusual.

 

I got all of the ones from Great Expectations, none of the others.

 

I bought a new Borosilicate Tea Kettle. It works very well. I just wonder why Bodum has this on the package.
(Sorry for the image. My mother took the picture, but the flash did this every time.)

 

Sadder is knowing what my neighbour's response to that would be: "Cling-wrap the child first, that will keep them apart..."

 

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Smile reduction: 73%

 

(She's not big on maternal instinct, yeah.)

 

Hahaha. I still own a Nokia 6015i. It still has the original factory battery. I still have 10 days standby, and 8 hours of talk time on it. It has a pull-out antennae, AND a supplemental internal antennae.

The best thing.. When the office building I work in added metal foil window covering to reduce heat entering the facility to reduce cooling costs, when they put up the last pieces on the floor, everyone else in the office lost their phone connection.

The brick lost no signal at all. My phone makes phone calls, crude text messages, and acts as an alarm clock. And it will continue to do so for me until either it dies, or I do.

 

It read once why some older stuff lasts so long. Apparently engineers knew at one point that all of the calculations as far as structural integrity, durability, etc. were so inexact that they purposefully would over-engineer the stuff. But as their knowledge improved, and they learned a whole lot more about materials science, and so on, they had more precise knowledge, so their was no practical reason to do that anymore.

So the reason why so much modern technology is crap that won't survive past the warrantee date, is because of improvements in engineering... Sad but true.

 

There is a bit more to it than that. Modern electronics can still be obtained that are every bit as durable and resilient as they were expected to be ages ago. You just have to pay a hell of a lot more. Greed lowered the bar of what is considered acceptable in the factories.

Look at CPUs. Say you have a facility making quad core CPUs that should run at 3.8 Ghz at 125 watts. Half of them these days will fail to operate at that speed and wattage reliably. Those are clocked lower and sold as if they were intentionally made that way. Due to even more cheapness in materials and processes, some of them will have one or more cores that simply are not reliable enough to enable. They are switched off and it is sold as a three or two core CPU.

Every industry has examples of this. And it can be argued either way, but in many ways modern is a downgrade over old stuff.

 

No I agree that greed drives it, but greed ALWAYS HAS driven it. It's just that now, they know a lot better as to how little they have to put into an item in order for it to last to its warrantee date.

 

The evolution of modern crap engineering is easily understood.

1) Most engineers would prefer to build high quality stuff which would cost more, but last longer.
2) Most VIP's would prefer to make more money per unit by building as cheaply as possible, and sacrificing long term durability.
3) VIP's hire engineers.


My mother owned a 1960 RCA-Imperial washing machine for 42 years. It did three loads of laundry a day, nearly every day, for that entire time. It required no repairs at all until it was 30 years old, and then only occasionally after that. in 2002 the tub developed a leak.

We actually were able to locate a replacement tub, but the metal components holding the tub in place had actually welded themselves together. I'm a good mechanic, but when components actually weld each other together, and you don't have a full fledged machine shop with torches that have heating heads, you don't successfully disassemble and reassemble things like that.

How long does a washing machine last these days? 10 years, if you get a good one, and use it lightly?

 

My father has shoes from 1980 that he's worn - seriously - every day to work. They still look good as new. Good craftsmanship for the win.

 

Also, don't forget that things are typically made on a larger scale than they were even just 20 years ago, but also in countries that typically have lower quality standards (which, really, is probably not helped by the obscenely low wages the workers are paid).

I work in retail and the vast majority of what passes through my stockroom (I'm a stock monkey, yay!) is made in countries like Vietnam, China, Bangladesh and so on (although, oddly, we have products manufactured in Estonia...). Considering the abysmal wages they're paid and the sheer number of products made (I saw a box which stated there was almost forty-thousand of those items made), I think lower quality is to be expected. I don't think it's right, as such, but if people keep buying them then it'll never change.

Although, that said, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's almost too expensive to buy higher quality stuff all the time. Or it seems so when you compare it to the more mass-produced stuff that fills stores.

Reminds me a little of how the food markets operate in the UK and US.

 

I still stand by the claim that if you pay enough for what you seek, it will be superior to what was made ages ago. But that may not do without some explanation. What you pay is secondary to the research you did. If you go to a quality store, it is still just a middleman. You have to know the items you buy are made right or it means nothing how much you pay.

Many stores buy "Discounted" products that simply do not meet the quality requirements other stores have for the same item. Usually these costs almost if not exactly the same amount. This is why I avoid doing deals with Wal-Mart for electronics and appliances. They negotiate closed deals that they cannot even discuss. That alone says it all.

If looking for electronics, I look for items I can find references to online and that replacement parts are available for. If they do not sell spare parts, then you absolutely will have to replace the entire item when it dies. That is a deal breaker for me.

But hey, we are a bit off topic here. So I present "Stupid Cats"... Bad language. You have been warned. Kids go lock yourselves away. Bad words make your ears dissolve.

 

Back to the funnies, then.