But they weren't trying to replicate the results of the myth. The results of the myth was the guy getting busted before he could even finish the parachute, which means even if they were ignoring the actual myth and instead just trying to see if building a parachute would work, the 3-hour limit was irrelevant.
No, that's the result of the real event. "Replicating the result" means replicating what the myth claimed would happen, and figuring out what it would really take to achieve that outcome. Here, the myth was not that the guy tried to make a parachute; that's simply a fact. The myth was what the guy believed: that by making a parachute and jumping out the 20th-story window, he could escape the police. That's the "result" in Mythbusters terms: the outcome he believed would result if he did a certain thing. The question the team was examining was, if he'd actually made the jump rather than being arrested -- if he'd jumped just before the police stormed the room at the 3-hour mark -- would it have worked as he believed/hoped it would? (Sure, they could've tested the scenario that the police would've waited longer than 3 hours, but maybe that was standard procedure or something, so they decided to go with the alternative that only the criminal's actions were different.) And once they found that it wouldn't have worked, the next question was, what would that criminal have needed to do to escape a hotel room via makeshift parachute? What would he have had to do in order to achieve the desired result? Really, there's a whole subgenre of Mythbusters segments where they test escape schemes, starting with the first-season Alcatraz myth and including others like the salsa escape, the horse pulling out prison bars, the makeshift ropes made from various materials, the paper crossbow, the techniques for eluding bloodhounds, etc. Here, too, they were testing the feasibility of the criminal's escape plan -- not what actually happened, but what he wanted to do. It's just that, unlike many of the other plans they've tested, this is a plan that never actually got put into practice.
Again, the 3-hour limit has nothing to do with the myth. The myth was based on a real, verifiable event and in that real, verifiable event, no parachute was made and used in three hours. It was not a part of the myth, unless "Mythbusters themselves making shit up randomly and then trying to pass it off as an accurate part of the myth" counts as a myth. And no, it wasn't even a part of the myth they presented. The myth (actually, it's not even a myth, but whatever) they presented included the fact that he was interrupted in creating the parachute after only three hours. Which makes this an even bigger bullshit parameter because they literally added the completely and utterly inaccurate detail just a few minutes after saying so.
You're missing the point. The myth is not the documented event. You can't call something a myth when you know it happened -- as you yourself admit in your next paragraph. A myth is an unproven claim, account, or belief. In this case, the myth was the criminal's belief that if he made a parachute out of supplies in the hotel room and jumped out the window, he could escape. Or, to come at it another way, what they were testing was his escape plan, just like in the many other prisoner-escape myths they've done over the years. Sure, granted, they were testing whether it could've worked if he hadn't been interrupted after 3 hours. So sure, yeah, they could have defined their hypothetical scenario as "What if the police had waited longer than 3 hours and he hadn't been arrested before trying to jump?" But instead, they chose to define it as "What if he'd finished the parachute just before the police raided?" There could be multiple reasons they did that. The main one, of course, was that deadlines are dramatic and it would be more challenging for the team if they had a limited time to make their experimental designs. But maybe there were other reasons. It could be that in the actual case, the parachute was already completed when the police stormed the room, so that it was made in less than three hours. Or maybe they decided it was simpler to alter the behavior of just one person than of all the police officers and officials who were involved in the decision to storm the room.
Exactly. And the 3-hour limit wasn't a part of it whatsoever. Exactly. Because the 3-hour limit wasn't actually a part of the myth. Exactly. They made shit up that had nothing to do with the myth. They might as well make it all up from this point onward if they're just going to keep pulling everything out of their ass like that. No need for researchers or anything. Just make it up. Hell, they nearly did the same thing with the bike myth when Adam decried that because the first remote model went up on its back wheel it wouldn't could because, apparently, bikes only count as bikes when both wheels are touching the water. Even though it was still a bike riding across the water.
Even so, that was a bit rude of me. Sorry. I'm recovering from minor surgery and I was irritable last night.
The same reason you were, apparently. Sans medical reasons. It's okay, I know you have a hard time admitting your wrong. It's no big deal. All is forgiven.
^Ohh, good grief. That's what I get for trying to extend an olive branch. I stand completely by my position that you're fundamentally missing the point and employing flawed reasoning. I just have better things to do than argue with a closed mind over something this ridiculous.
Moving on... Crash cushion: I've never heard the term "T-bone" for a vehicle hitting the side of another vehicle at a right angle. It's the favorite car/truck crash method in Hollywood these days because of the visual shock of seeing the vehicle just coming right toward the camera (and the POV shot of same here was pretty scary), but somehow the name for that particular type of impact has never come up in any of the countless movies and shows that use it. Why is it called that? Is it just because the two vehicles are at a right angle like the shape of a T? Is there a reason for the "bone" part or is that just embellishment? I see they're reusing the huge dump truck from the season premiere. But sadly, they didn't keep that nifty cab armor this time, replacing it with a battering ram. I'm a little surprised it was safe for Jamie and Adam to just crash into another car like that, but I guess it helped that the ram was attached to the hopper or bucket or whatever you call that part of a dump truck, so that assembly and its connections absorbed the bulk of the impact (plus I think the front plate deformed some on impact). Ingenious plan for the overweight human analogues. Using foam rubber as a storage medium for water is a very clever approach. It is largely air, after all, so in a way it's a more robust water balloon. And I do have experience with how heavy waterlogged foam rubber can get, from that one time I dared to wash a foam rubber pillow (and man, did I get a workout trying to wring the thing out). I'm kicking myself for not anticipating that the guy would actually be crushed worse whe sandwiched by the other two guys. I realized it about a minute before Jamie said it: water is incompressible! The reason their scale test didn't work was because the "car" they built didn't compress when it was struck, so all mini-Buster had to contend with was g-forces. But in the real crash, the car was crushed. As long as Syndaver Buster was alone in the back seat, he basically did just have g-forces to contend with, but he was crammed in between two large incompressible bodies that were forced directly against him by the compression of the car's frame, so he wasn't just knocked around but literally crushed. So of course it did a lot more damage. This was a case where the small-scale test just wasn't a valid analogue for the real event. Favorite bits: A battering ram with SCIENCE on it, and Jamie saying "It's clobbering time." "Hypermiling": I'm surprised the car got better mileage at 45 than 55. I recently learned that the reason the US highway speed limit was set at 55 MPH during the Carter Administration was not for safety reasons as I'd always thought, but because there was a nationwide fuel shortage at the time and the cars of the era got the best gas mileage at 55 MPH. It would be surprising if modern cars, which are theoretically more streamlined, would get their peak mileage at a lower speed. That technique of accelerating and decelerating slowly is something I do anyway as a matter of course, particularly since I learned how much gas a car uses when it accelerates (courtesy of my aunt and uncle's hybrid minivan with a display that shows you your estimated gas mileage while you drive). I had no idea there was a nickname for it, though. I don't turn off the engine at stop lights, though I sometimes shift into neutral if it's a long light -- not sure how much of a difference that makes, though. And yet somehow I still manage to get worse mileage than I'd like (though I just filled up today and calculated my mileage, and I managed to maintain c. 20 MPG in mostly city driving since my last fill-up, which is better than usual for my car). As for not braking on turns, no, thank you -- I'll take the loss for safety's sake. It'd be better to get a car with regenerative braking, as I think it's called -- that system that captures some of the lost energy from braking and puts it back in the battery or whatever. And is removing the side mirror legal? That's surprising. I guess a lot of people get their mirrors knocked off by accident, so maybe it has to be legal so they're still able to drive; but it doesn't seem like it would be all that safe. The disturbing thing was that the 5-years-older car (I think that's the one Tory was driving) got so much better mileage than the brand-new car. That seems like the wrong direction to be trending.
Surprised somebody hadn't heard T-boned before! Now you have to use the expression in a story. Trucks ramming cars is always fun, and yeah, the big SCIENCE ram was hysterical! I too was surprised that it was actually worse with the extra people. The mileage test was just as boring as all previous mileage tests, though. At least Kari was there to look at while I yawned. Driving at 45 is NOT an option on NJ highways. If you're not doing at least 65 here, you're causing a traffic jam. And anybody who doesn't take off the instant the light turns green will be getting a push.
In Finland you don't necessarily need to have the passenger side mirror if you have a rear view mirror installed and there is adequate visibility through the rear window. Conversely, you don't need to see through the rear window if you have the passenger side mirror installed. Regulations might be similar in California. I think the reason why the newer car had so much worse mileage is that the newer car has a lot more electronics in it. Electric devices make the car heavier and consume more power, so the engine has to work harder, which consumes more gas.
Most anywhere I know of you only need the driver's side-view mirror. It used to, actually, be an OPTION to get the passenger mirror.
The point here isn't so much to avoid breaking, but to avoid accelerating more than you need to in the first place, and if a corner is coming up, to lower your speed by going off the gas in anticipation of having to reduce your speed.
^Well, I do that anyway, but often it doesn't diminish your speed enough by the time you get to the curve. And you saw how Kari was reacting -- it was pretty harrowing to make the turns at the higher speed. I'd think the loss of calm would cancel out a lot of the benefit from not braking.
Apropos of nothing, I'm consantly driving behind people on our local roads who are driving at 30 MPH (10 below the limit), and who hit the brakes as they go around even the gentlest of curves. I usually don't even have to brake even when I'm behind them, 'cause, well, we're only doing 30MPH for chrissake! [/NJ driving rant]
Ugh, this week's episode is combining two things I don't like. One is the kind of episode that's a crossover with/promotion for another Discovery Channel show, something that's happening far too often lately (and a tightrope walker? Seriously?). The other is the "duct tape survival" format. I didn't like the previous one and I don't like this one much better. I mean, they've already proven that duct tape is useful. They're not really doing any mythbusting with things like this; it reduces it to just a typical Discovery "building stuff" show. Indeed, since they fictionalize the premise, it kind of works against the spirit of busting myths. There was a bit of the ol' experimental process at the river, though, with the test of the bubble-wrap flotation suit (which was a total bust) and the designs of the boats. For once, Adam's design seemed a lot more elegant and practical than Jamie's. But the pretense of their being stranded bothered me, because it meant they were riding the rapids without helmets or padding. And those duct-tape life jackets looked suspiciously like real life jackets disguised with duct tape. And really, why even bother running the rapids or climbing down that second cliff? They'd already gotten proof of concept for the boats and the climbing rig. There was no science there, it was just "Let's pretend we're a Discovery survival show." The problem is that the Discovery Channel has mutated around Mythbusters during the decade it's been on the air. When the show began, Discovery was still at least somewhat a science-oriented channel. Now it's just macho stuff that's mostly about either building things, wilderness survival, or explosions. And that creates too much pressure for Mythbusters to follow suit.
Yeah, usually I watch the show with focused attention, but last night, it was just more or less playing in the background as I puttered upon the computer. You mention the possibly disguised industry standard life jackets. I wonder if the duct tape "rope" was really disguising a certified rock climbing rope...for safety and liability contracts. Which leads one to wonder how many of those shots were really Adam and Jamie. I will admit at least one or two of those shots with Adam thrown from his canoe and rolling through the rapids really looked like Adam. If it were a stunt double, the production certainly matched the performers better than some other shows. And the show always loses a few points from me when Kari is not present. Sincerely, Bill