Watch: Cornstarch flamethrower is awesome

[Willondon]

@shaddack

It’s actually annoyed and grumbly, not outraged.

Your garage band might have been inspired to make something of itself were it not for the unfortunate name Annoyed and Grumbly Against the Machine.

[anon68952647]

@cntrfldr

Yes, I agree. Children would have been much more combustible than paper zombies.

Powdered child is even more so. Just need a little liquid N2 and a hammer.

[shaddack]

@Willondon

Your garage band might have been inspired to make something of itself were it not for the unfortunate name Annoyed and Grumbly Against the Machine.

…and I just ran out of likes! Grumble!!!

[Tommy_Mato]

Cool comment and good advice. I take action, mostly by proxy in that I make monthly contributions to charities Oxfam, Greenpeace and Amnesty. Symbols AND action are based on values. My values tell me never to willingly waste food while there are people in dire need of it.

[MadLibrarian]

Did your mom pull the “Eat that! there are starving children in India!!” on you too?

[Tommy_Mato]

Yep

[shaddack]

@Tommy_Mato

…Greenpeace…

This bunch puts ideology over actual performance. They are good for stunts but they aren’t so good for actually making things better. One of their critics is their own founder.

Criticism of Greenpeace

[Tommy_Mato]

I’m sure that any large organisation can be subject to criticism however I believe in what they are trying to do, and that is to preserve this environment for the humans and other creatures that reside in it. If that means digging up less stuff so that we make fewer useless things for the amusement of bored westerners then I’m all for it.

I like Boing Boing; it regularly brings interesting topics to my attention, but one aspect grates and that is the stream of promos and reviews of useless tat. Hey, look at this toothbrush that whistles the tune to Dixie as you brush your teeth. Here’s a steampunk toaster that doubles as an iPod charger. Marvel at this Hello Kitty pacemaker with a remote control modelled on a Klingon battleship. The food-wasting flamethrower is right up there with garbage that amuses a childish person for 2 hours and then gets thrown on the landfill heap.

[shaddack]

@Tommy_Mato

I’m sure that any large organisation can be subject to criticism however I believe in what they are trying to do, and that is to preserve this environment for the humans and other creatures that reside in it.

Good in principle but the deployment they propose sucks goat balls. Look at their rabid screams against common-in-nature lateral gene transfer that suddenly becomes Horribly Wrong when done in a targeted way in a lab, or perhaps even more rabid screams when it comes to nuclear tech. Their proposals to harvest energy from unreliable and atrociously low-density sources are good for smaller-scale local needs but for a truly reliable sources to power e.g. vertical farming (and how else would you get cities food-independent) you need thorium-cycle reactors. Of course the greenies meanies won’t hear a word about it. They bitch up a storm even about fusion because it does not fit their non-nuclear ideology.

@Tommy_Mato

If that means digging up less stuff so that we make fewer useless things for the amusement of bored westerners then I’m all for it.

That incidentally stops the tech progress, too. Because if we are stuck with silicon lithography and never run into its limits, and not have a market with demands pushing for more, we may never invest into molecular electronics. I, for one, don’t want to go back up onto the trees.

@Tommy_Mato

I like Boing Boing; it regularly brings interesting topics to my attention, but one aspect grates and that is the stream of promos and reviews of useless tat.

If its intend is to amuse, and it does so, it is by definition not useless.

@Tommy_Mato

Hey, look at this toothbrush that whistles the tune to Dixie as you brush your teeth.

The additional cost of the chip is negligible. If it lasts as long as a regular toothbrush, why not.

@Tommy_Mato

Here’s a steampunk toaster that doubles as an iPod charger.

A toaster can last for ages. So what if it is designed to look whimsical. (But beware of the Darth Vader ones. The toasts always end on the dark side.) The built-in charger is a nice additional touch that saves on plastics for housing a separate device.

@Tommy_Mato

Marvel at this Hello Kitty pacemaker with a remote control modelled on a Klingon battleship.

Now THAT is cuuuute!

@Tommy_Mato

The food-wasting flamethrower is right up there with garbage that amuses a childish person for 2 hours and then gets thrown on the landfill heap.

Some of the gadgets, whimsical as they are, can last. And at the end of their life be harvested for parts.

If you want a difference here, push rather for better documentation of the big tech, so people have a chance to repair their domestic gadgets and keep them out of landfills (or spare-part crates) for longer. (The counterargument is the energy efficiency of newer vs older. But that’s for a total-cost-of-ownership calculation.)

On a side note, my employer does plastic moulding as part of the business. The whole process, from brownish crude through various stages of refining, the runny fluids or gases, the polymer pellets and masterbatches, down to when the thousand-ton-of-clamping-force behemoth spits out an entire car dashboard is downright fascinating.

As of the flamethrower, it is a perfect educational example of flammability of organic dusts. Not only it is amusing, it has the potential to save lives by making people aware of this property of dust materials. And saving lives is good, isn’t it?