BS: The best laid schemes

Subject: The best laid schemes
From: Bert
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 05:19 PM

Seeing as we are talking about technology in the 2001 thread, I thought I'd start a thread about Technology gone wrong.

My submission would be the Aeroplane. It was invented so that mankind could achieve the freedom of the birds. BUT, what happens when you fly, you are stuck for hours into a tiny seat cramped between people on either side and your knees are pressed hard against the seat in front.
You have never been so UN-FREE in your whole life. Not what the Wright Brothers intended I'm sure.

So what's your submission?

Bert.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 05:29 PM

Does it have to be of this or the previous century? If not, I nominate chastity belts and sanitary belts. Thank the gawds/desses for sticky-backed pads! Who ever thought having a piece of metal with little teeth, snuggled in your pubic hair, and in your backside, all day was going to be anything but a torture!?

Also over the shoulder seatbelts which have no clue as to where short people's chests are! I actually read about a woman who was decapitated because the bloody thing hit her at neck level, as does mine!

LOL, thanks, bert

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Bert
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 05:33 PM

Ah yes seat belts. Absolutely useless for big people as well.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: sophocleese
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 10:35 PM

Exercise machines so that people can drive to the gym to spend half an hour walking in the same place looking at the same view out of the same window.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 11:46 PM

Those little plastic boxes with buttons that fit over the neck of the Roy Rogers guitar. You played chords by pushing the buttons. Yechhh

Rick

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 11:47 PM

Well, a lot of them use television to numb the experience, y'see...

A

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Troll
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 11:56 PM

Dishwashers.
You gotta wash the damn food off the dishes before you put 'em in the machine, right?
So whats the good of the machine excpet to use power and take up space? (Yeah,Yeah, I know that the new ones will take the hardest crud off. So be literal.)

troll

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Bert
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 12:03 AM

Yer right soph. I used to know a guy who paid someone to cut his grass so that he would have time to go to the gym!!!

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: ddw
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 12:48 AM

How about people who live in air conditioned houses, drive air conditioned cars, work in air conditioned offices and pay big bucks to belong to a club so they can use the saunas to sweat?

david

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 02:19 AM

Mobile phones. Convenient? Yes. Useful? Yes. Practical? Yes. Annoying? Yes, Expensive? Yes, dangerous? Yes, downright bloody rude? YES!!!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 02:23 AM

I'm with Rick...

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: CarolC
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 03:33 AM

The brassiere.

I know we need it, but it is a device of torture. Especially the underwire kind.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Bert
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 03:52 PM

Whilst "Those little plastic boxes" sound horrible to most of us I am sure they could be put to good use for people who are handicapped.

Perhaps we need to invent one that will insert HTML line breaks into a posting.

Bert

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: BlueJay
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 08:12 PM

I recently heard they are going to outlaw cell phone usage while driving in New York City. Apparantly they've determined there is no safe way to drive while talking on the phone and giving someone the finger.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: GUEST,Uncle Joe from Kokomo
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 10:56 PM

The stock market began as a way to own a bit of the company and help finance business, while profiting if it did well. Now it is just a wild, uncontrolled scheme for speculators to try to make money without working, often by manipulating the market illegally. The entire economy is often in danger because too many idiots are throwing too much money around with too little idea what they are doing!

"When elephants battle, ants are trampled"

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: kendall
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 07:14 AM

The electric guitar was invented because the acoustic could not be heard in a band. Now look what happened! There must be a place in hell for Les Paul. How about continuous recordings of Lawrence Welk?

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Grab
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 08:41 AM

When Benz invented the car, he never thought he was creating a penis extension. Or a mobile "love shack".

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Gervase
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 08:57 AM

I wish chewing gum hadn't been invented. It's filthy bloody stuff, and gets everywhere. Walk on any pavement in central London after a rain shower and look down - there's millions of little white blobs, all of them reminders of someone's gormless mastication and thoughtless gobbing. Ugh!
I did try chewing chicle sap once in Central American, and that was quite good at staving off thirst - but why in the name of anything anyone needs to chew all the time in a city I don't know.
Ah, the joys of the Mudcat - a chance to rant! Gawd bless Tim Berners-Lee and those awfully nice chaps at CERN.
(Talking of which, his original server on which the first web-page ever was hosted just ten years ago is now in the Science Museum in London. And, like every other server in the world since, it has a scruffy sticky label on it with "Do NOT switch off!" in red felt-tip!)

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Naemanson
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 09:10 AM

While you are thanking people for computers and the web don't forget John Eckhardt and Presper Mockley (sp?).

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 10:34 AM

as an electronic engineer I have to apologise to the world that we gave it the AMPLIFIER.
aural acuity diminishes above a certain volume.
if your ear buzz 5 minutes later damage is accumulating. Buzz the next day and damage is done!

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: nutty
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 12:47 PM

The child proof tops to medicine bottles ( and other bottles) that can't be opened by the elderly or anyone with arthritis in their hands. I curse them every time my mother calls me to go over and open hers ( she's 88 and detests infirmity)

Also Gervase - I take on board your comments about chewing gum, but it is a lot less anti-social than the cigarettes that I smoked before I started chewing.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Bert
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 01:09 PM

Here ya go Naemanson

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: kendall
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 01:11 PM

I understand chewing gum is forbidden in Singapore??? I have always loved that sit com, Barney Miller, but could not stand Max Gail chomping that damned gob of gum.It makes you look like your IQ is about room temperature.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Naemanson
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 03:19 PM

Thanks, Bert, that's what I needed. Some time ago I heard a radio story about them. I printed up a little sign using the names in my post and taped it to my monitor at work. I was working from memory and obviously screwed it up. My computer now has a corrected sign on it.

Some times I express gratitude to those two and sometimes vituperation!

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Kim C
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 03:39 PM

Caller ID. Now you can get a blocker for caller ID, and a blocker to block the blocker. If you don't feel like talking just don't answer the phone.

I have a mobile phone and I love it. I don't use it often. BUT I am out after dark alone from time to time, and I do have a headset to go with it. Also it's great when we're travelling. I agree that people abuse them, especially while driving - but if they start outlawing it, pretty soon we won't be able to drink our morning coffee on the drive to work either, or eat in the car, or change the radio station. Let's be honest, all these things can be dangerous, not just phones.

Speak for yourself about the underwire bra! Some of us gals need that extry help. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Bert
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 05:39 PM

Ah yes Naemanson, when I was programming in COBOL, I used to go 'round muttering "I hate Grace Hopper, I hate Grace Hopper" - But it's still one of the best programming languages.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Hollowfox
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 03:04 PM

Nutty, when those childproof caps first came out, my mother had a headache, and couldn't get the cap off the asperin. She picked up a "church key" type bottlecap remover and decapitated the bottle. It never had a chance. (You don't want to upset my mother when she has a headache.)

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Bert
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 03:12 PM

And you'd think that cloning would have brought us more benefits than cloned sheep. Why do we need a CLONE OF A SHEEP? they all look the bloody same anyway

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Bert
Date: 20 Apr 01 - 01:39 PM

There's almost a song challenge here

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: GUEST,UB Dan
Date: 20 Apr 01 - 03:17 PM

bert, oddly enough we do need cloned sheep. A rare number of sheep produce an enzyme that is necessary for the production of medicine for people who have Cystic Fibrosis. At the moment when one of these sheep pass away, hundreds of sheep need to be tested to find 1 that can replace it. The sheep is not harmed or killed to produce the medicine. That's why the wool from the first sheering of Dolly was used to knit a sweater to be auctioned to raise money for CF research.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the number-one genetic killer of children and young adults in the U.S. One in 29 Americans -more than 10 million people- is an unknowing, symptomless carrier of the defective gene that causes CF. This gene causes the body to produce an abnormally thick, sticky mucus. This abnormal mucus leads to chronic and fatal lung infections and impairs digestion. Currently, there is no cure for the 30,000 individuals with CF.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Bert
Date: 20 Apr 01 - 03:27 PM

I didn't know that UB Dan, now you have gone and spoiled my joke dammit.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: GUEST,UB Dan
Date: 20 Apr 01 - 05:13 PM

Besides...I think that same technology is used to produce these Joe Clones that pop up here every once in a while...maybe these Joe Clones are really a new species of highly developed sheep?? I'm not sure what this means for humanity...

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 20 Apr 01 - 05:34 PM

The worst invention? That a damned perplexing question to ask someone who mulls the possibility of being a Luddite every time the server kicks out. How about a top ten list? 10-remote control car starters/locks. You're going to the bloody car anyway! What's the point? 9-The clapper. 8-The butterfly ballot. 7-electric blankets. I just know that the power companies had something to do with that. 6-Gas inserts for fire places. Why bother, It doesn't look right and it doesn't feel right. 5-cellular phones. They probably serve a purpose but I have to be allowed a rant here. 4-cow feed that is nothing more than ground up cow parts. It just ain't natural and even the cows know that. 3-Chemical warfare weaponry. Some people just have to be nasty and those are almost as nasty as it gets. 2-Biological weaponry. Just as nasty as number three with the added benefit of being much harder to detect and disapate and the number one most useless invention is (Drum roll, if you please Mr. Krupka.) Nuclear weapons. What the Hell were we thinking!!! There are enough nukes in the word to destroy the planet a thousand times over and now our government (The U.S.) wants to build another type to blow up underground bunkers. How about we ask the good people of Hiroshima if we didn't really screw the pooch there. Thank you , I now return you to your regularly scheduled rant already in progress Honorable mention, the TV. I mention it only because the potential for the TV has really been wasted. Kindest reguards, NEil

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Apr 01 - 06:06 PM

TV remote control channel changer. My SO changes channels every ten seconds or so(heaven knows what he'd be like with the choice you've got in the US!) On the other hand - I don't watch much TV anyway, so perhaps it's a blessing in disguise.

Subject: RE: BS: The best laid schemes
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 21 Apr 01 - 07:49 AM

I had forgotten about that! My brother in law is the worst for that! Look ast the guide for crying out loud! Neil