Seeing these ghostly apparitions that still ply the highways and country roads of the (mostly) developing countries, makes us better appreciate what we have (even though we complain about high maintenance, repair and gas bills). The logistics required to make these cars marginally road-worthy boggle the mind. Driving them is similar to boarding abandoned roller-coaster, you never know if there is a crash waiting at the next turn.
Thanks to Tony Pearson, who sent in these photos, we now have a little better idea of what the driving in Venezuela looks like.
all-wheel steering
Taxis are not in any better shape:
Cuban Buses
Disregarding the condition of other cars in Cuba (almost all of them would throw US safety expert for a loop, and US vintage car collectors are amazed at how some ancient models still drive around), take a look at the public transit buses in Havana. Very strange.
Sorry to disappoint you, but the dragonfly is more akin to an rc airplane or car than a robot. It's also available at your local Radio Shack for USD 50.00
Somebody seriously needs to develop a robotic honeybee since the real ones are disappearing... and what will pollinate the fruit trees (and bazillions of other things) if they're gone?
I have worked at many radio stations over the years. Some of these pictures are TAME compared to the nest of wiring I've seen. One engineer even said that it was easier to run a new wire than to trace the one that needed replacing.
The Cray is NOT a bad job. Part of the PM on a Cray, and any other Supercomputer that I have worked on has been to measure the impedance of the wire and trim until it is within spec. The wires have to look like this because it would be insane to lace them have to unlace them all trim them and relace them all.
The MD-80 is actually not a bad job, neither is the cray 1 (if that is what those bins of what looks to be 24 gauge wire is for). In both cases, it's just a lot of wire, at least it's not being stretched and thrown around in a mess. It's all orderly and bundled
@casus belli please avoid making Russian what is well-known to be Soviet - Victory Day on 9th of May is USSR achievement, not RSFSR one; strategic armed forces were done in Soviet time (not Russian); etc etc etc. And if you take it for granted - even "modern" Topol missile system were designed and launched in production (and then suspended in early 90s). In other words, current Russian system can not do anything apart feeding huge bureaucracy machine and filling up oligarch's pockets ;)
The Rubezh" MAZ-543M to which you refer is an anti-ship cruise missile launcher of the CSSC family of missiles (Silkworms, Seersuckers, etc...NATO designations).
Despite the skull and crossbones that cover the bright red button at the center of this Self Desctruction USB Hub and give it the aura of impending doom if you get anywhere near that button, the device is actually just a four-port USB hub. But in those moments in front of your computer when you lose a ton of work, get fired via email, or slow processing simply breaks the camel's back, sometimes a resource for even merely mimicking your own self-destruction can provide relief. You'll be happy when you wake up the next morning that it wasn't real.
WHAT A GREAT SERIES! Thank you for the inspiration! If I don't get my garden work done, it is the fault of the friend who sent me the link to this great article!
Like don't diss Marxism Leninism! Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, Chauchesku... That was just a fluke. Just because Marxism has turned every country it touches into a poverty stricken facist hell-hole, doesn't mean there is anything wrong with Marxism or Leninism! Marxism failed because the people in those countries where inherently inferior and evil - Why if good white upper middle class bay-area hipsters like Cory Doctorow were leading the revolution, it would be nothing but kittens and cupcakes for everyone! After all, Cory is so much cooler than a bunch of dirty and ignorant cossacks.
Insightful and profoundly witty though Anonymous' critique may be, it misses doctorow's point. There may well be very good reasons for criticizing communism, but jet-powered ice-sleds isn't one of them.
These are great pictures, and thanks for posting them. But I've got to agree with doctorow, the commmunism crack is silly, particularly since it was only thanks to the revolution that backward, monarchist, agricultural Russia left the dark ages and actually became industrialized.
I'm with the first anonymous poster- clearly Lenin was responsible for the failure to realize futurist visions not only in Russia, but in every other country in the world. I think he must have used commie magic, or something. Seriously though, obviously this vision of the future never came to pass because it's _completely absurd_. Those sleds are hard to make out, but aren't those propellers in front? They appear to float in mid-air, unconnected to the vehicle. It'd be great to have the streets filled with those- one could imagine the carnage if they crashed into anything.
If you take into account Cory's aberrant post about Allende's "internet", you'll realize that even tho he hates "Big Brother", he thinks that it would be really cool if a communist had succeeded to create the tools used to supervise the unwashed masses. As a Chilean I feel insulted.
And tho obviously this vision of the future never came to pass because it's completely absurd, the reason they never got to try and attempt to develop that technology (and learn from those mistakes), has a lot to do with their social collapse.
"QUANTUM SHOT" #144
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