MYTHBUSTERS 2015 Season Thread

[Christopher]

I just find it a bit needlessly... prudish? I guess is the term I'll go with. I mean, it's a video game, graphics, computer images, why should "violence" in that be disturbing? Further more I don't get why many find violence in movies disturbing. It's Karo syrup and spirit gum.

Maybe, but that doesn't mean I like being reminded of what it represents. There are plenty of people who dislike seeing gore, and you don't get to tell them they're wrong just because you see it differently. And going on about it for nine paragraphs feels pretty judgmental from this end.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Just for fun:
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucw-zW_Q7P4[/yt]

 

[Owain Taggart]

I got to watching the Indiana Jones episode last night and thought it was fairly entertaining. There were moments where I felt lonely in that there was no other team, but I think that's a feeling that will pass. On the whole, I thought it was quite good and it does make me excited about what's to come. Adam's whip-making skills were quite impressive. I don't know if I'd have enough patience to do that.

 

[Trekker4747]

I'm going to agree with Christopher that this was a fairly meh episode. Not too much to mull over, really. It was interesting but so-far the new format/direction the show is going is fairly underwhelming.

So they tested "myths" from a first-person shooter game and an Internet Flash game.

Fascinating.

I will say their real-world Doom level did look pretty fun, and I say this as a person who's not much of a fan of Doom or First-Person shooters. (Not because of their content, just because I need more "depth" from my game, I suppose, than just walking through a level and killing things.)

How long before real-world FPS arenas now pop-up using correctly-weighted paint-ball guns and stuff. Their set-up did look pretty darn fun. The results from Jamie and Adam's individual tests were not overall too surprising given that we are looking at two middle-aged men who while healthy are probably not in ideal physical condition.

The results of the UFC dude was pretty surprising in that he essentially met his "control" time perfectly.

I'm not sure what we were supposed to gather from the Fruit Ninja tests. What is go with that one or go with testing whether or not it's possible to sling-shot birds at poorly constructed structure in order to demolish them?

It was another one that looked like it may have been sort-of fun but, really, not like something that needed to be tested. I'm sure there's another video game trope they could have looked at. One involving crashing cars or something?

Also, I'm surprised in that one they didn't also maybe test it with someone more adept at using a sword? (Though I guess the premise is, with the game, is that the user is an amateur and not an expert swordsman.)

Okay episode, though I'm still not 100% digging the new format and this one seemed to be lacking in the science content, looks at the build process and discussions on the physics of everything going on. (What I thought the aim of the new format was.)

In the "Behind the Myths" tour Jamie and Adam did recently that brought them to Kansas City one of Adam's segments was him talking about how he taught himself how to juggle and push his limits at it more and more. We've seen him juggle plenty of times in the show, but it was interesting to see it here and to see him doing it with the professional jugglers.

 

[Christopher]

Also, I'm surprised in that one they didn't also maybe test it with someone more adept at using a sword? (Though I guess the premise is, with the game, is that the user is an amateur and not an expert swordsman.)

I recall the narrator saying that Adam is an expert swordsman.

 

[Forbin]

Well, a "trained" swordsman was the phrase.

My dog was trained too, but she was only an expert at sleeping and eating.

 

[Redfern]

As silly as this may be, the thing that stuck with me was all that wasted food. Oh, I'm aware that's just a "fart in a full gale" if one calculates all the food in a single day wasted in single city, let alone the whole country, but I kept thinking, "Crap! That could have fed someone." Of course, the same logic could be applied to all the pork used as a "stand in" for human flesh in their various injury tests.

I guess seeing it wasted as opposed to simply looking at statistics makes the difference.

(Now watch me get "raked over the coals" in the ongoing "troll" thread within the "Neutral Zone".

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[TheSeeker]

I had a lot of fun watching this episode. Sure, the outcomes were pretty predictable, but just seeing them recreate a video game in the real world was a kick. I also just got a kick out of seeing how much Jaimie and Adam had on the Doom myth. What can I say. I'm easy to please.

 

[Trekker4747]

Also, I'm surprised in that one they didn't also maybe test it with someone more adept at using a sword? (Though I guess the premise is, with the game, is that the user is an amateur and not an expert swordsman.)

I recall the narrator saying that Adam is an expert swordsman.

As Forbin[/i] said, "trained" is probably a better way to put it than an expert. Adam's shown himself to be quite skillful in a number of areas but to the extent to achieve expert status with a sword? I sort of doubt it, something like that takes considerable time and skill and considering a couple weeks ago we saw Adam wasn't adept at using a whip I suspect he wasn't too much an "expert" at a sword. Besides, in some other sword-related "myths" they've brought in expert swordsmen to test the limits of their experiment.

As silly as this may be, the thing that stuck with me was all that wasted food. Oh, I'm aware that's just a "fart in a full gale" if one calculates all the food in a single day wasted in single city, let alone the whole country, but I kept thinking, "Crap! That could have fed someone." Of course, the same logic could be applied to all the pork used as a "stand in" for human flesh in their various injury tests.

I was waiting for someone to mention this. And arguments like this sort-of bug me. Yes, I know we live in a privileged world here in the US, or any First World country, where there's an abundance of food while there's people in Third World countries starving.

The problem is that such thinking ignores that it's not very easy or practical to transport food from places of plentiful supply to places of meager supply especially when the food you want to move highly perishable, as fresh fruits and other produce are. Grocery stores throw away a lot of produce every day simply because it has reached a point where it is inedible and/or unsellable. Same thing applies for meat, while meat is a bit more sustainable with freezing or refrigeration it's not entirely practical to transport it from a place of great supply to a place of low supply. It's still a fairly time-sensitive product especially with your destination doesn't have the facilities to maintain the holding temperatures for keeping meat refrigerated or frozen. So, again, all of the time in this country lots of meat gets thrown away.

So Mythbusters buys food that was either destined for a stomach or a trash-bin, but one way or another it wasn't going to go to a starving stomach in Africa and the person it was going to likely feed likely got another piece of it given the abundance of food we have here.

Besides, in an episode dealing with smashing a fruit-stand from a couple seasons back the Jr. Mythbusters team mentioned that the fruit they stocked the fruit stand with was already deemed inedible and was destined for the trash heap anyway. Any number of reasons why it could have been considered inedible. Either it was past its prime use date, it was from a contaminated crop or batch or just simply something happened between the field and the warehouse that caused the fruit to be considered unsafe for consumption.

I suspect the pigs they use for human analogues are similar circumstances, for one reason or another it's food that was considered inedible so the Mythbusters used it for their experiments rather than the food being trashed/destroyed.

 

[Christopher]

Grocery stores throw away a lot of produce every day simply because it has reached a point where it is inedible and/or unsellable.

And they stupidly make the problem even worse by constantly spraying their fresh produce with water, which makes it rot faster. Evidently it's meant to make it look better or keep it from wilting or something, but wilted greens can easily be restored by cutting off the base and putting it in water so they can soak up moisture (water inside = good, water outside = bad). So they're wasting tons of food and money (and water) just for a superficial and questionable improvement in appearance, and it really aggravates me.

 

[Trekker4747]

Well, yeah, it's largely done for appearances. But people can be picky, dry-looking vegetables look unappealing meaning people are less-likely to buy it. It looks wet and glistening? More likely to buy it. Blame the American consumer for, largely, being idiots.

I deal with a lot in the meat department where people are reluctant to buy dark-looking meat even though brownish meat is perfectly edible and even going to make for a better meal than bright-red meat as it's going to be more tender.

This potential loss keeps meat prices high which is going to be significant.

"Planned losses" in produce isn't too much an impact since produce tends to be pretty cheap. But, really, I personally don't see it as too much of a "waste of food" because it's food likely wasn't going to be eaten one way or another. It isn't in any way practical to take the abundance of produce grown here in America and ship it to places that need it more considering a good deal of produce in stores is shrunk out.

It's one of those loses that's simply part of the system we've created here. It would be ideal if it were possible to take shrunk-out produce or even meat items and donate it too food shelters some homeless or poor people can have it but when you're talking out perishable food items you're possibly dealing with a host of health issues when it comes to consuming meat or even produce out of its prime.

Solution to the problem? Build more farms and produce warehouses closer to starving countries and people. That's the only way wasted food in America can get eaten. Because, as it is, food is grown and produced where there's a population to eat it. It's not financially responsible to produce food near smaller populations with people who cannot afford or are even able to pay for it and it's virtually impossible to ship perishable foods from places of production to places of great need.

It's the F'd up economical system we as a species have built for ourselves.

 

[Christopher]

Well, yeah, it's largely done for appearances. But people can be picky, dry-looking vegetables look unappealing meaning people are less-likely to buy it. It looks wet and glistening? More likely to buy it. Blame the American consumer for, largely, being idiots.

Except all the nasty rotting greens on the stands kind of cancel that out, if you ask me. I've had so many frustrating experiences trying to find a head of Romaine lettuce that wasn't already partly rotten. These days I pretty much either buy pre-bagged Romaine lettuce or go down to the local farmers' market and buy it from people who don't assume their customers are idiots.

Grocery stores would be better off educating the public. Produce departments already have signs telling consumers how to judge quality or ripeness, so why not just explain this too?

 

[Trekker4747]

I don't necessarily disagree, but I don't work in produce so I don't have a whole heck of a lot of experience over there, just roughly familiar with the procedures and such over there.

I have had plenty of luck in the meat department teaching customers that dark or "not completely red" meat is better-tasting and will cook better than perfectly red meat. There's still times when I have to mark down or grind-out a perfectly good piece of meat simply because it's not attractive looking and the bosses (store and district) like the cases looking fresh and red. Still, I push it as much as I can.

 

[Romulan_spy]

I can't help but think that Mythbusters has become Adam's personal playground, especially this last episode with a full size Doom themed paintball game. We've now had Adam plays Indiana Jones, Adam's plays A-team, Adam plays Doom.

 

[Trekker4747]

Something of a trailer/preview for the "Transformers" episode is now available on Discovery's/Mythbusters' website and it's not what we all feared. The premise from the commercial seems to be along the lines of the Duck/t Tape special where Adam and Jamie used the stuff to survive on, and escape from, a deserted island.

In the preview they're left to their own skills and devices to transform a car into a motorcycle. Not sure what "myth" they're testing but the trailer seems to imply it's inspired by real-world events.

LINK

Test seems to be inspired by this story:

LINK

Where a man was stranded in the desert with a damaged Citroen 2CV car and was able to break it down and rebuild it into a motorcycle to escape the desert.

The car in the Mythbsuters trailer is the same car in the "myth."

 

[Mr. Adventure]

So Junkyard Wars?

 

[Trekker4747]

Well, that was a little more like it! A good, fun, interesting episode with some fun engineering and look at some real-world "myths."

IIRC the guy who converted his car into a motorcycle happened many, many, years ago. Decades even. And when it occurred he didn't even publicize what he did too much. About the biggest thing that happened was is that he got a ticket because the license plate from his car that was now on the motorcycle was no longer accurate. I wonder if there wasn't some other aspect to his design that made it more drivable that Jamie/Adam overlooked?

It's fascinating, though, how "easily" it could be done with that crummy little car, and how easily it came apart.

The floating bicycle I've not much to comment on, I didn't suspect it'd have too much trouble accomplishing what they set out to do and I knew Jamie's more elegant and engineered design would be better than the rougher one in the myth.

It probably should have been built so the rider and the frame of the bike road much, much, higher out of the water (other than the paddle wheel, of course) since the more surface area in the water the hard it's going to be to move. Bigger catamarans/floats and a higher frame would have kept Jamie's feet out of the water (meaning he could pedal faster since he wouldn't have to push against the water as well as the bike's own mechanical resistance) and allowed the bike to float higher in the water. Again, other than the paddle wheel which Jamie had designed to be lowered into the water after leaving the surface anyway.

But this was a fun one, really enjoyed it. Not based off of any property, no trying to duplicate TV/video game/movie/cartoon physics or scenarios. Just these two brilliant men thinking their way through an engineering problem/question.

I'm really surprised, though, they couldn't have engineered a more workable motorcycle from the car than what they came up with originally.

 

[intrinsical]

They initially opted for the easier approach.

Adam said it best. Sure, he could use a handsaw to cut a hole through the chassis for the rear wheel but it would have taken him one or two days. It would also take a serious amount of muscle to remove the engine and place it on top of the chassis. Doing these alone in a desert environment doesn't sound very plausible.

 

[Christopher]

Not bad. Nice to get away from the media tie-in episodes. The Citroen rebuild was pretty interesting. They came up with some ingeniously simple solutions, even if it didn't ultimately work. But, man, those POV shots of the bike tipping over on the runway were harrowing. That looked pretty dangerous.

The amphibious bike thing was one myth where it would've been good if Kari were still around, since they commented on the rider in the myth being a woman who was considerably lighter than Adam. I wonder if that would've made a difference.

It probably should have been built so the rider and the frame of the bike road much, much, higher out of the water (other than the paddle wheel, of course) since the more surface area in the water the hard it's going to be to move. Bigger catamarans/floats and a higher frame would have kept Jamie's feet out of the water (meaning he could pedal faster since he wouldn't have to push against the water as well as the bike's own mechanical resistance) and allowed the bike to float higher in the water.

It looked to me like the pedals were almost entirely out of the water as it was, just skimming the surface at their lowest point.

 

[Captain Crow]

I wonder if there wasn't some other aspect to his design that made it more drivable that Jamie/Adam overlooked?

Side stabilizers to keep it from tipping over.