MEIGNORANT

Turtle pie

Seafood pie

There is an ancient tradition of wild hyena feeding in Harar, Ethiopia, which is still being practiced today. As far as I understand, this is a rite of peace-offering. The wild hyenas enter the city in great numbers during the night, and they are quite capable of snapping limbs from poor fellows sleeping on the streets. Those wild beasts are really strolling through the city in the dark, I saw them myself!

> large image <
For several centuries the rite of hyena feeding has been performed by a single family. Fathers were passing the skill to their sons, and so on.
The guy on the first photo carries a basket full of rotten meat outside the city wall and summons hyenas with scary inhuman shouts. The beasts come and get their portion of stinking meat. For the greater effect the feeding is done mouth-to-mouth style...

> large image <

According to a friend of mine it was filmed in the Red Sea, Egypt. Me looked all over the internet, but couldn't define these species. Nevertheless, it would be so cool, if some other weed on the surface could do the same trick.

Recently I've come across this fascinating version of chess. I've had an opportunity to play it and lost. Apparently I need more practice, but the concept itself is beautiful!

The regular chess rules are used, although the shape of the board is obviously different.

A year after the Plane On Treadmill Problem became popular on Digg, the so called “Mythbusters“ made a TV show claiming they solved it once and for all. Too bad they turned this noble scientific experiment into a big-ass pick-up truck commercial. Watch it for yourself, but note the following:

1. Can the truck drag the plane parked stationary on tarpaulin? No! When the dude tried to run on the slow-moving tarpaulin like on a treadmill he ripped huge holes every time he touched the ground, so forget about doing the same with a 500 lb plane. This means that pick-up truck + tarpaulin don’t really substitute or even simulate a treadmill.

2. Is there a perspective where you can see clearly the truck with tarpaulin and the plane going opposite directions? No! All the dudes show are just weird angles. Moreover, if you go to 6:58 or 8:14 of the video and watch it frame-by-frame, you can see the plane accelerating on stationary tarpaulin. Yes, the tarpaulin is NOT moving anywhere. Why would they fake it? See paragraph 1.

Cheap tricks, me say. The problem stays unresolved until a proper experiment is conducted.

Are you watching closely?

Shadow from the truck at 6:43 is on its left side. However, 4 seconds later at 6:47 the shadow is behind it!

Felis silvestris catus is a carnivorous mammal. It hunts and kills other animals in the vicinity. The motivation is not entirely clear..

Illustration: Bloodless

The aircraft will not fly. Wheels don't make an aircraft fly, nor does thrust (look at a glider). The force that makes an aircraft fly is the air that passes over the wings creating lift (air moves at more velocity over the top of the wing than the lower surface, creating a low pressure area - therefore, lift).

The treadmill always moves at the same speed as the aircraft - so the aircraft can never gain forward momentum in relation to the static (unmoving) neighboring air, therefore the wings can not create lift. In effect, the treadmill, the wheels and the engines don't even matter in the 'problem' - if the aircraft can not move in relation to the air (and create lift) they might not as well even be moving. Even an aircraft using very heavily 'blown' wings and flaps (using engine bleed air) require at least a small amount of forward motion to create the extra lift which is used for very low speed takeoffs. (Search the NASA site for more details...)

Simply put it's not an aircraft's engines that make it fly, it's the result of the movement of the air over the wings (the engines simply move the aircraft forward, creating that movement.) No movement no lift. No lift, no fly.

There IS such a thing as a variable speed treadmill - an automotive dynomometer. Somebody have an airplane we could use?

Mike Kopack
FAA Airframe and Powerplant Technician
EX USAF F-16A/B/C/D Crew Chief
http://www.lucky-devils.net

Click the "play" to view video.