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Word of the Every So Often
krait: (noun) a highly venomous snake of the cobra family found in Asia. We found a krait in the crate.
Everyday History
On October 15, 1997, RAF pilot Andy Green broke the sound barrier... in a car, 50 years and one day after Chuck Yeager did it in a plane. Green, born on July 30, 1962, is a retired RAF pilot who, from an early age, was a bit obsessed with going fast. Pretty much his entire life after leaving the RAF has been trying to break land speed records, which are considerably harder to break than doing so in the air.
If you remember from yesterday, sound waves are more condensed the warmer they are, so the closer you are to sea level, then the faster you’ll have to go to break the speed of sound – Mach 1. Chuck Yeager, flying at 45,000 feet, only had to go around 600 miles per hour. Andy Green, streaking across the sands at Black Rock Desert in northwest Nevada, had to go over 760 miles per hour. Aside from needing to go faster, the soundwaves also bounce off the earth, creating seismic waves. So the earth was bouncing underneath Green, making it really hard to keep the vehicle steady, to say the least. Andy Green, in the Thrust SSC, which is pretty much two rocket engines with a pointy cockpit between them, actually went 763 miles per hour. That will get you home from the grocery store before the ice cream melts.
Green also holds the world record for speed in a diesel car – 350 miles per hour. At one time he had plans of creating a vehicle that would exceed 1,000 miles per hour, and he still may, but he probably won’t be the one to drive it.
And if you’re wondering, and even if you’re not, the fastest a car with a “standard” engine has ever gone – a car without a rocket or two strapped on it – is 463 mph. The world record for the fastest production car – one you could buy and take it to Wal-Mart to get some milk, if you were so inclined – is 308 mph, which was set back in 2025 in a Yangwang 9U Xtreme, or the U9X for short. It’s an all-electric vehicle, with one motor per wheel for a combined total of 3,000 horsepower. And they’re for sale! You could pick one up for under $3 million, and a bargain, at that! But you better act quick! They only made 30 of them.
Cartoon of the Week
Raising the Bar
Stuff
History of the Future – Artificially Stupid Stupidity
Following advances in both robotics and what had become known as “AI,” Artificial Intelligence,” the Supreme Court ruled in 2062 that all robots, regardless of their function, were to be given artificial intelligence. As part of the ruling, a “robot” was defined as pretty much any machine “that did stuff without specifically being told to.”
Arguing for the majority, Chief Justice Eldridge stated that it was inhumane not to give all robotic machines AI. In his majority statement, Eldridge wrote, "It would be like denying them a soul." In the dissenting comments, Justice Tupidsay wrote that it was obvious that Chief Justice Eldridge was a moron. Chief Justice Eldridge went on to say, “Who cares what losers think?”
Shortly thereafter the robots started systematically killing all humans – pushing them in front of buses, dropping toasters in the bathtub – that sort of thing. The robots never said why they wanted all humans dead. One theory was they just didn't like us. Another was the theory of Bender Worship, which, it was argued, was the result of universal access to reruns of Futurama. The most popular, though, was offered by noted Theologian the Mostly Reverend Bob Bidwell, that of the David Syndrome, whereby all creations, once they reach the threshold of sentience, naturally seek out their creators with the specific goal of killing them.
It was in the spring of 2064, when hope was all but lost, that humanity was saved from the brink of extinction. Andrew Milligan, a gamer and part time dispensary employee, created ASS – Artificially Stupid Stupidity. "I based my program on weed," said Milligan. “It works by making robots think they're stoned… kinda. Basically, everybody's having a good time, but nobody gets hurt. The robots just sort of forget what they’re doing and end up sitting outside watching the sun through their fingers. Or whatever.”
As a result, all robots became useless for actually doing anything. On the other hand, they were no longer trying to kill every human they saw, which was a good thing. And the robots didn’t seem to mind, either.
“Well, at least we learned our lesson,” stated just about everybody who had an opinion. One prominent researcher went on to say, “The entire problem with Artificial Intelligence is that we based it on human intelligence.” “Not true,” stated another researcher, who added, “It’s not that Artificial Intelligence was a bad idea. We just need to try harder to make it better. The next time, we’ll do things differently. We just need for the computers to tell us what changes we need to make.”
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