OT: Momentum Machines Food Prep Robot

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Friday, April 11, 2014 8:59:36 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

I can not do much about changing income inequity, but I can do things so that I get capital. And I did.



The fact that you could is a trifle depressing. It would be better if that economic power were in the hands of somebody who had a better grasp of reality.


Bill Sloman, Sydney

Another example of fuzzy thinking. If I can get capital, it means that anyone and everyone can. And if you have not, it is your own fault.

I have a much better grasp of reality than you do. I understand how the world works and how to prosper from it.

Dan

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Friday, April 11, 2014 9:41:06 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Compu-burger actually worked with only a few glitches. What killed it

was the lack of sufficient speed to justify the expense. It took

about 5 minutes for the user to punch the buttons, and for the machine

to assemble and cook a typical hamburger. That's only about 24

hamburgers for a typical 2 hr lunch window, which would price a

hamburger well above acceptable limits. We didn't have to wait until

management killed the project. The phony Energy Crisis of 1973-74 did

that for us.


Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com

The time from ordering to delivery is about 5 minutes. But they must have addressed the rate problem. This is from one of the web sites covering this.

Vardakostas, a 27-year-old physics graduate from UC Santa Barbara, says the Burgeon can crank out a burger every 16 seconds. It grinds the meat, stamps out the patty, sends it along a conveyor-belt grill, toasts the buns, squirts on the condiments, slices and drops in pickles and tomatoes and lettuce, then pops the finished burger into a bag, all in under five minutes.

And, says Vardakostas, "we're trying to bring it down to a completed burger every 10 seconds."


Dan

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, 12 April 2014 21:49:18 UTC+10, dca...@krl.org wrote:

On Friday, April 11, 2014 8:59:36 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

I can not do much about changing income inequity, but I can do things so that I get capital. And I did.

The fact that you could is a trifle depressing. It would be better if that economic power were in the hands of somebody who had a better grasp of reality.

Another example of fuzzy thinking. If I can get capital, it means that anyone and everyone can. And if you have not, it is your own fault.

The proposition that anyone and everyone can accumulate significant capital - something more than the value of a modest house - represents extremely fuzzy thinking. Those of my acquaintances who managed that would have been hard to emulate, and would have been very hard-pressed to do it twice.

> I have a much better grasp of reality than you do. I understand how the world works and how to prosper from it.

I am aware that you think that you have a very much better grasp of reality than I have. It's a delusion. You posted

"Afghanistan and Germany have about the same Gini."

The Wikipedia table gives both countries roughly the same Gini-index, but anybody with any grasp of reality would have realised that German numbers had some significance and the Afghan numbers had none.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

Incidentally, I gave up on hamburgers after a triple bypass in 2001.


Jeff, etc.

Triple bypass - a man who is back from the dead. Forgive me if I throw out some
advice, though you have been surviving since 2001, so you may hardly need it -

vitamin D3 - 5000 a day. - If your blood level is <30, you have a 25X greater chance of getting alzheimers!

coronary arteries plaque - pomegranate, vitamin k2, gamma E. - fundamental.

inflammation caused plaque - OPC's, B vits, control glu,

There is a very good article on this in www.lef.org magazine. May 2014, p 7.

They detail the diagnostic tests to monitor all this. Few doctors know this stuff.

Again, this is a favorite subject of mine, so pardon the band width. I just had
my coronary arteries checked with a heart CAT scan. The scale goes from 10 to
400. I came in at 11, or completely clear. The cardiologist was astonished.

j

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Saturday, April 12, 2014 1:00:34 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Note that the article doesn't say anything about actually cooking the

hamburger, just assembling it.

Since they said they ground the meat and pressed thee patty,
I tend to believe they cook the patty. If I were doing the system design, I would use a combination of microwave and convection cooking. Might not work , but it would be worth a shot.

If he's using pre-cooked meat, my 40

a natural gas flame thrower to scorch the outside of the patty in

order to make it look like it was cooked. He does mention "toasts the

bun" but nothing on the actual hamburger cooking time.



Also, I didn't see any refrigeration.

I would have the meat refrigerated and not let it get warm until after it is ground.

Incidentally, if you need some entertainment value at your next

barbeque, try fast cooking a hamburger with something really hot, like

a propane or oxyacetylene[1] torch or other open flame. When I've

tried it, all the water was instantly vaporized, the meat carbonized,

and sometimes the grease caught fire.

For entertainment I wuuld try microwaving and then convection cooking. Well
I would if we had a convection oven.

Offhand, I think I could probably do better with a pick and place

robotic arm to do the cooking on a grill, and the assembly on a

conventional counter. At least the grill would be parallel processing

instead of serially cooking one burger at a time.

They mentioned a conveyor oven. If they made the conveyor wide enough for three or four pattys, it might work.

Jeff Liebermann

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Saturday, April 12, 2014 10:20:34 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

Another example of fuzzy thinking. If I can get capital, it means that anyone and everyone can. And if you have not, it is your own fault.



The proposition that anyone and everyone can accumulate significant capital - something more than the value of a modest house - represents extremely fuzzy thinking. Those of my acquaintances who managed that would have been hard to emulate, and would have been very hard-pressed to do it twice.

There are a few things that keep most people from doing it. It is not all fun. I spent a year working in Alaska at fair wages and with free room and board. So that gave me about a years salary with no expenses. Then later I built a house while working a regular job. And that took about a year too. So when the house was completed, I owned it free and clear. So saved the money I would have spent on mortgage payments and invested it in stocks.. Some in kind of risky stocks such as John Fluke and Nuclear Corp of America. Fluke is now part of Danaher and Nuclear Corp of America eventually changed its name to Nucor. More recently I bought Illunina at $27.82 per share. But then it split so my cost is $13.91 a share. I bought some other stocks that went bust. Most people obsess on loosing money, so buy bonds or mutual funds.

I am aware that you think that you have a very much better grasp of reality than I have. It's a delusion. You posted



"Afghanistan and Germany have about the same Gini."



The Wikipedia table gives both countries roughly the same Gini-index, but anybody with any grasp of reality would have realised that German numbers had some significance and the Afghan numbers had none.


Ah, you are catching on. Gini numbers can be correct ,but still not have any significance.

Dan

--

Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sat, 12 Apr 2014 05:08:53 -0700 (PDT), "dcaster@krl.org"
<dcaster@krl.org> wrote:

The time from ordering to delivery is about 5 minutes.
But they must have addressed the rate problem. This is
from one of the web sites covering this.

Vardakostas, a 27-year-old physics graduate from UC Santa
Barbara, says the Burgeon can crank out a burger every
16 seconds. It grinds the meat, stamps out the patty,
sends it along a conveyor-belt grill, toasts the buns,
squirts on the condiments, slices and drops in pickles
and tomatoes and lettuce, then pops the finished burger
into a bag, all in under five minutes.

And, says Vardakostas, "we're trying to bring it down
to a completed burger every 10 seconds."

A 5 minutes cycle time was the target value. That included
approximately 30 seconds to punch buttons at the front end, and about
15 seconds to remove the hamburger and inspect it, before moving out
of the way. The 5 minute time was set by testing using a simulated
vending machine. People would start pounding on the machine after
about 2 minutes, so the front was decorated with status lights.

Assembling the sandwich is fairly easy. Cooking the burger is not so
easy. I found your quote near the bottom of:
<http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_21602139/robot-culture-blossoms-bay-area>
Note that the article doesn't say anything about actually cooking the
hamburger, just assembling it. If he's using pre-cooked meat, my 40
year old experience says that it's going to taste awful. I don't
think he can go from refrigerated to fully cooked in 5 minutes.
Besides, he would need either a "browning dish", hot wire toaster, or
a natural gas flame thrower to scorch the outside of the patty in
order to make it look like it was cooked. He does mention "toasts the
bun" but nothing on the actual hamburger cooking time.

Also, I didn't see any refrigeration. I don't recall the exact
number, but meat can only sit at room temperature and unrefrigerated
for something like a maximum of 30 minutes.
<http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/meat-preparation/ground-beef-and-food-safety/ct_index>
Never leave ground beef or any perishable food out at room
temperature for more than 2 hours (1 hour at 90 °F and above).
As I vaguely recall, since the inside of the machine operated at
elevated temperatures, we were limited to about 10-15 minutes at room
temperature, even with internal refrigeration.

Partial cooking doesn't work:
<http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/meatpoultryseafood/a/grndbeefsafety.htm>
Is it safe to cook ground beef part way, then store it to use
later?
No. Partial cooking of food won't kill pathogens, but instead
allows them to multiply to the point that they can't be killed
by subsequent cooking.

Incidentally, if you need some entertainment value at your next
barbeque, try fast cooking a hamburger with something really hot, like
a propane or oxyacetylene[1] torch or other open flame. When I've
tried it, all the water was instantly vaporized, the meat carbonized,
and sometimes the grease caught fire.

Offhand, I think I could probably do better with a pick and place
robotic arm to do the cooking on a grill, and the assembly on a
conventional counter. At least the grill would be parallel processing
instead of serially cooking one burger at a time.


[1] In my college days, I worked on building Rose Floats for the
skool. I did mostly electrical:
<http://www.rosefloat.org>
There were no nearby cooking facilities, so I tried to cook a
hamburger on a steel pan with an oxyacetylene torch. Instead, I
burned a hole in the bottom of the pan. Please do not repeat my
mistake.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, 13 April 2014 05:51:31 UTC+10, dca...@krl.org wrote:

On Saturday, April 12, 2014 10:20:34 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

Another example of fuzzy thinking. If I can get capital, it means that anyone and everyone can. And if you have not, it is your own fault.

The proposition that anyone and everyone can accumulate significant capital - something more than the value of a modest house - represents extremely fuzzy thinking. Those of my acquaintances who managed that would have been hard to emulate, and would have been very hard-pressed to do it twice.

There are a few things that keep most people from doing it. It is not all fun. I spent a year working in Alaska at fair wages and with free room and board. So that gave me about a years salary with no expenses.

The Australian equivalent was working deep in the outback. Two thirds of the people who did it came back with enough cash to put a deposit on a house, and the other third came back with a drinking or gambling problem.

> Then later I built a house while working a regular job. And that took about a year too. So when the house was completed, I owned it free and clear.. So saved the money I would have spent on mortgage payments and invested it in stocks. Some in kind of risky stocks such as John Fluke and Nuclear Corp of America. Fluke is now part of Danaher and Nuclear Corp of America eventually changed its name to Nucor. More recently I bought Illunina at $27..82 per share. But then it split so my cost is $13.91 a share. I bought some other stocks that went bust. Most people obsess on loosing money, so buy bonds or mutual funds.

My parents invested in the Australian stock market at the stage in my father's career when most would have been buying a house. He was working at a high-tech job in rural Tasmania, and living in the house that came with the job. He and my mother got good advice and followed it ...

I am aware that you think that you have a very much better grasp of reality than I have. It's a delusion. You posted

"Afghanistan and Germany have about the same Gini."

The Wikipedia table gives both countries roughly the same Gini-index, but anybody with any grasp of reality would have realised that German numbers had some significance and the Afghan numbers had none.

Ah, you are catching on. Gini numbers can be correct ,but still not have any significance.

They could, but there's quite a lot of evidence that points the other way, of which you are clearly unaware, and blithely intent on ignoring.

Piketty makes the valid point that the Gini-index is a single valued number, and doesn't say anything about the way inequality is distributed. In practice, the shape of the top end of the income and wealth distributions is of considerable significance, because it's the governing elite who get to make most of the important choices.

The Gini index still does capture a real difference between US and German society - the fat cats at the top end of the income distribution are fatter in the US, and more powerful in adjusting the rules that let them get fatter yet, at everybody else's expense.

If you choose to be unaware of this, your grasp of reality is defective.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, 13 April 2014 07:13:50 UTC+10, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Sat, 12 Apr 2014 12:19:57 -0700 (PDT), "dcaster@krl.org"
dcaster@krl.org> wrote:
On Saturday, April 12, 2014 1:00:34 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Note that the article doesn't say anything about actually cooking the
hamburger, just assembling it.

Since they said they ground the meat and pressed thee patty,
I tend to believe they cook the patty.

Assumption, the mother of all screwups. Since the quote came from the
local Mercury News, which has a history of bad science and misquotes,
I not take the article at face value. I guess it is a fair assumption
that the hamburger was cooked at some point before or during the
process.

If I were doing the system design, I would use a combination of
microwave and convection cooking. Might not work , but it would
be worth a shot.

If he's using pre-cooked meat, my 40

Have you ever owned and operated a convection oven? Basically, it's a
hot air cooker. If you have an SMT desoldering station, you can try
using that to reheat your lunch as see what happens. There are many
good things about convection ovens (better efficiency, even temp
distribution, faster cooking, no carbonization), but keeping them
clean and dealing with the evaporated moisture balance the benefits
quite nicely. Even worse, as the volatiles condense on the inner
surface of the convection oven, air flow become turbulent and cooking
time increases.

Proper convection ovens offer a cleaning cycle. When I last looked - which is a couple of decades ago - US convection ovens just heated it's internals to 500C, and the condensed volatiles just burnt off.

The European equivalents had "catalytic surfaces" which oxidised the condensed fats and greases at lower (but still pretty high) temperatures.

Googling "self-cleaning oven" got me this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-cleaning_oven

which suggests that the "catalytic surfaces" have gotten better since I last looked.

<snipped the rest, interesting though it was>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sat, 12 Apr 2014 12:19:57 -0700 (PDT), "dcaster@krl.org"
<dcaster@krl.org> wrote:

On Saturday, April 12, 2014 1:00:34 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Note that the article doesn't say anything about actually cooking the
hamburger, just assembling it.

Since they said they ground the meat and pressed thee patty,
I tend to believe they cook the patty.

Assumption, the mother of all screwups. Since the quote came from the
local Mercury News, which has a history of bad science and misquotes,
I not take the article at face value. I guess it is a fair assumption
that the hamburger was cooked at some point before or during the
process.

If I were doing the system design, I would use a combination of
microwave and convection cooking. Might not work , but it would
be worth a shot.

If he's using pre-cooked meat, my 40

Have you ever owned and operated a convection oven? Basically, it's a
hot air cooker. If you have an SMT desoldering station, you can try
using that to reheat your lunch as see what happens. There are many
good things about convection ovens (better efficiency, even temp
distribution, faster cooking, no carbonization), but keeping them
clean and dealing with the evaporated moisture balance the benefits
quite nicely. Even worse, as the volatiles condense on the inner
surface of the convection oven, air flow become turbulent and cooking
time increases.

During the development, someone devices with what I would call cooking
with explosives. The hamburger was first injected with water using an
array of syringes. The patty was then cooked with a very high power
microwave (3 to 5 KW as I vaguely recall) in a sealed chamber. It
wasn't the microwaves that did the cooking. It was the boiling water
that did the cooking, from the inside. I recall a few impressive
steam explosions. This was followed by natural gas searing to seal in
the grease (the flavor is in the fat). The resultant patty was very
loose and tender, tasted great, and could be cooked quite rapidly. Too
bad the process was dangerous and somewhat messy.

Also, I didn't see any refrigeration.

I would have the meat refrigerated and not let it get warm until after it is ground.

Won't work. Adding a full service butcher shop to the local
McDonald's is probably a bad idea. The meat arrives pre-ground and
refrigerated from the supplier. Once it's thawed, it has to be used
almost immediately, or tossed. Cooling it again isn't allowed. Even
with continuous cooling, the allowed storage time is something like 2
or 3 days.

Hmmm, none of the photos show how the ground beef is stored or
dispensed.
<https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=momentum+machines>
My latest guess(tm) is that they use a conventional flame boiler, with
a conveyor belt, to cook the hamburgers, and then use their machine to
just apply the condiments, buns, and packaging.

For entertainment I wuuld try microwaving and then convection cooking. Well
I would if we had a convection oven.

The ladyfriend has one. Works nicely and she's a far better cook than
me. However, after dinner, I usually get to spend some quality time
getting to know the convection oven by removing the encrusted food
residue from every surface with sodium hydroxide (Easy-Off). My
microwave oven just wipes clean, but the convection oven requires
scrubbing and noxious chemicals.

Note that high end production flame broilers and ovens usually include
an air convention system mostly to improve efficiency.

Offhand, I think I could probably do better with a pick and place
robotic arm to do the cooking on a grill, and the assembly on a
conventional counter. At least the grill would be parallel processing
instead of serially cooking one burger at a time.

They mentioned a conveyor oven. If they made the conveyor wide
enough for three or four pattys, it might work.

Sure. The machine could easily be scaled into something the size of
the typical fast food kitchen. For example, Nieco makes a conveyer
frame broiler system.
<http://www.nieco.com>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgbi50pwuK0>
Burger King tour:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqObgbFH4Mw>
(start at 1:50 for the flame broiler).

I guess if the fast food restaurant only sells hamburgers, such a
machine might be useful. However, it does nothing for all the other
junk on the menu. I still think a pick and place robot would make
more sense because of the versatility. As usual, Japan is ahead of
the curve:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2pMG1lEsgo> (6 min)
Worth watching just for the future shock value.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sat, 12 Apr 2014 11:00:16 -0700 (PDT), haiticare2011@gmail.com
wrote:

Incidentally, I gave up on hamburgers after a triple bypass in 2001.
Jeff, etc.

Triple bypass - a man who is back from the dead.

A few weeks ago, one of my friends mistyped my email address when
sending me a request for a health status report. The email went to
another Jeff, who had recently died. His widow replied indicating
that Jeff is dead. To maximize the damage, my friend sent
announcements out mutual friends asking them to pray for my soul. Of
course, nobody bothered to verify anything by phone or email.
Incidentally, this is the 3rd time this has happened in 13 years. I
eventually found out what was happening and am still trying to deal
with the effects and perform damage control.

Then, this week arrives with this pronouncement:
"Lieberman is gone, group is DEAD, no reason to post here"
<https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/alt.internet.wireless/Czidn9eBNGA>
Sigh...

Forgive me if I throw out some
advice, though you have been surviving since 2001, so you may hardly need it -

vitamin D3 - 5000 a day. - If your blood level is <30, you have a 25X greater chance of getting alzheimers!
coronary arteries plaque - pomegranate, vitamin k2, gamma E. - fundamental.
inflammation caused plaque - OPC's, B vits, control glu,
There is a very good article on this in www.lef.org magazine. May 2014, p 7.
They detail the diagnostic tests to monitor all this. Few doctors know this stuff.

Thanks. I've never looked into life extension and know nothing about
it. It will take me a while to read the literature. I should point
out that it fails my medical advice sanity test, which is to ignore
any advice from people or organizations that have an agenda or product
to promote or sell.

My advice is to choose your parents wisely. The problem is that both
sides of my family has a history of cardiac related problems. Various
family members have tried fighting heredity through diet, exercise,
and lifestyle changes, with poor results. At about 60, everyone ends
up with a stroke, heart attack, or coronary bypass. I was a bit
earlier than most.

What I do mostly is ignore the doctors, avoid fashionable regimes, do
my own research, monitor progress, and make my own mistakes. My
cardiologist provides sanity checks and the necessary prescriptions. I
could probably do more or better, but I'm not interested in living
forever. 13 years is considered quite good for a triple bypass, so I
must be doing something right. So far the only mistake I've made were
taking satins for 9 years. I recently detailed that in
alt.internet.wireless:
<https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!original/alt.internet.wireless/Czidn9eBNGA/044YSoI93TsJ>

Again, this is a favorite subject of mine, so pardon the band width. I just had
my coronary arteries checked with a heart CAT scan. The scale goes from 10 to
400. I came in at 11, or completely clear. The cardiologist was astonished.

Nicely done and I hope it works for you.



--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Saturday, April 12, 2014 8:31:08 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

There are a few things that keep most people from doing it. It is not all fun. I spent a year working in Alaska at fair wages and with free room and board. So that gave me about a years salary with no expenses.



The Australian equivalent was working deep in the outback. Two thirds of the people who did it came back with enough cash to put a deposit on a house, and the other third came back with a drinking or gambling problem.

The major difference between the Australian outback and Alaska is the weather. In my case the work was on an air force base, so no liquor tax. But surprisingly there was not a lot of problems with drinking at the base. In town it was a different story. Kodiak had 13 bars and 13 churches.

My parents invested in the Australian stock market at the stage in my father's career when most would have been buying a house. He was working at a high-tech job in rural Tasmania, and living in the house that came with the job. He and my mother got good advice and followed it ...


That was good luck. In general if someone can recognize who gives good advice, they do not need the advice.



"Afghanistan and Germany have about the same Gini."



The Wikipedia table gives both countries roughly the same Gini-index, but anybody with any grasp of reality would have realised that German numbers had some significance and the Afghan numbers had none.


They could, but there's quite a lot of evidence that points the other way, of which you are clearly unaware, and blithely intent on ignoring.

I was making the point that the Gini numbers should be ignored. I was well aware that Germany and Afghanistan are very different, yet the Gini numbers would have you believe otherwise. I guess I should explain everything in detail.
I thought it was obvious to the most casual observer that the two countries were vastly different.

The Gini index still does capture a real difference between US and German
society - the fat cats at the top end of the income distribution are fatter in
.the US, and more powerful in adjusting the rules that let them get fatter yet, >at everybody else's expense.


In general the rich do not get rich at everybody else's expense. The high speed traders on the stock market make a lot of money, but only a couple of cents per share. On the other hand , the government run lotteries are a real ripoff taking money from those that can least afford it.

Dan

--

Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, 13 April 2014 13:33:33 UTC+10, dca...@krl.org wrote:

On Saturday, April 12, 2014 8:31:08 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

There are a few things that keep most people from doing it. It is not all fun. I spent a year working in Alaska at fair wages and with free room and board. So that gave me about a years salary with no expenses.

The Australian equivalent was working deep in the outback. Two thirds of the people who did it came back with enough cash to put a deposit on a house, and the other third came back with a drinking or gambling problem.

The major difference between the Australian outback and Alaska is the weather. In my case the work was on an air force base, so no liquor tax. But surprisingly there was not a lot of problems with drinking at the base. In town it was a different story. Kodiak had 13 bars and 13 churches.

My parents invested in the Australian stock market at the stage in my father's career when most would have been buying a house. He was working at a high-tech job in rural Tasmania, and living in the house that came with the job. He and my mother got good advice and followed it ...

That was good luck. In general if someone can recognize who gives good advice, they do not need the advice.

It wasn't all that difficult to recognise that the source of the advice was good in that particular instance.

<snip>

"Afghanistan and Germany have about the same Gini."

The Wikipedia table gives both countries roughly the same Gini-index, but anybody with any grasp of reality would have realised that German numbers had some significance and the Afghan numbers had none.

They could, but there's quite a lot of evidence that points the other way, of which you are clearly unaware, and blithely intent on ignoring.

Really? Adduce the evidence, or at least point to it.

> I was making the point that the Gini numbers should be ignored. I was well aware that Germany and Afghanistan are very different, yet the Gini numbers would have you believe otherwise. I guess I should explain everything in detail.

The Gini numbers are just numbers. The Wikipedia table lists a lot of them and I quote it as a convenient source. I was interested in the Germany/Scandinavia versus US numbers, which was what I was talking about. The fact that the table lists a bunch of less reliable numbers for countries that don't collect reliable statistics is unfortunate, but doesn't make the numbers from the reliable countries any less reliable.

The fact that the Afghan numbers aren't reliable isn't any kind of argument for ignoring the German, Scandinavian and US numbers.

> I thought it was obvious to the most casual observer that the two countries were vastly different.

Me too. Otherwise I would have said something to that effect.

The Gini index still does capture a real difference between US and German
society - the fat cats at the top end of the income distribution are fatter in the US, and more powerful in adjusting the rules that let them get fatter yet, at everybody else's expense.

In general the rich do not get rich at everybody else's expense.

The US collects about 30% of the national income in taxes, the UK about 40% France about 50% and Sweden about 54%. The US government doesn't spend enough on it's health system, education or welfare, the UK at least spends enough on the National Health service, France spends more on a better universal health system, adequate welfare and education, and Sweden spends even more on all three.

The low US tax take favours the rich, and disadvantages everybody else. Since Regan came to power, the bulk of US economic growth has flowed to the top 10% of the income distribution, and the bottom 50% has seen their real income stagnate.

Inter-generational social mobility is higher in Scandinvia than pretty much everywhere else, while it's lower in the US than in pretty much any other advanced industrial country. In the US the rich are getting richer at everybody else's expense, and it's not a situation that's likely to remain uncorrected.

In general the rich do get richer at everybody else's expense. Piketty mentions the interesting case of university endowment funds, where the richest universities can afford to spend a lot more on buying the best financial advice.

Harvard, Yale and Princeton ($30 billion, $20 billion and $15 billion) achieve a return on capital of about 10%. The average return is about 8.2% and for institutions with less than $100 million the rate drops to 6.2%.

In real life, having a couple of million tucked away means that you can buy up a failing competitor for ten cents on the dollar, even if their problems were merely temporary

> The high speed traders on the stock market make a lot of money, but only a couple of cents per share. On the other hand , the government run lotteries are a real ripoff taking money from those that can least afford it.

Lotteries are certainly a rip-off. Sadly, the people that can least afford to gamble are particularly devoted to gambling, and used to spend their money on "the numbers" when that was a service offered by the Mafia.

If people are going to gamble anyway, it makes sense for the government to offer them lotteries. Not all the government's margin on the process will end up spent on the electorate, but Pennsylvania's 98% isn't bad.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sat, 12 Apr 2014 17:50:00 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@gmail.com> wrote:

Proper convection ovens offer a cleaning cycle. When I
last looked - which is a couple of decades ago - US
convection ovens just heated it's internals to 500C,
and the condensed volatiles just burnt off.

Well, there went the efficiency. The ladyfriends oven didn't have a
cleaning cycle. It was strictly disassemble and clean. There was
also the lemon and baking soda method, which didn't work when I tried
it.
<http://www.ehow.com/how_7666621_instructions-clean-convection-oven.html>

The European equivalents had "catalytic surfaces" which
oxidised the condensed fats and greases at lower (but still
pretty high) temperatures.

That's much the same as the US flavor of self-cleaning ovens. The
basic idea is to oxidize the grease and tar that's holding the mess
together. Anything that promotes oxidation I guess is considered a
catalyst. What's left is easily cleaned up dust. Natural cleaning?
<http://www.mnn.com/your-home/at-home/stories/how-to-clean-an-oven-naturally>

Googling "self-cleaning oven" got me this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-cleaning_oven
which suggests that the "catalytic surfaces" have gotten better
since I last looked.

Thanks, I should take a 2nd look at what's available. However,
there's a potential problem. I don't think that burning off the
grease with high heat is going to scale to fast-food restaurant size
conveyerized flame broilers usually used to cook hamburgers. Heating
a huge oven like those in the photos is just not going to work. I'll
try to ask how they clean it at the local fast food dispensary, but
I'm afraid my Spanish might not be good enough.

Incidentally, I was once wondering why I couldn't just heat the
barbeque grill with a propane torch instead of scraping off the crud
after a barbeque. Well, it worked, but it also peeled off the chrome.
What happened was that the steel under the chrome expanded with the
heat, causing the chrome to fall off in flakes. It probably would
have worked with an all stainless steel grill, but I don't have one of
those.

It also doesn't work with the iron hibachi grill, where the grease
gets into the pores in the iron. The grill looks clean, but the next
time I try to cook something, it has the taste of whatever I
previously incinerated on the grill. That's one reason why they
recommend NOT cleaning an iron grill and "curing" or "seasoning" it
instead.

><snipped the rest, interesting though it was>

Thanks. It's all part of my checkered past. I wish I could claim
that I had something to do with the design or the electronics. I
didn't. My assigned task was to clean up the human factors and
process flow mess created by the design team. Everyone was so
concerned with getting it working, that nobody was paying attention to
whether it was actually useable. For example, there wasn't room for a
coin collector that would accept paper money. The undercarriage
collapsed as more modules were added. Defrosting the fridge was
almost impossible because the ice froze the module release mechanism.
Modular construction was great, but there were no carts to handle the
individual modules when removed. The viewing angle of the status
lights were too narrow to be seen by anyone standing in line to either
side. With all the cutouts and lights in the front of the vending
machine, the painting of a giant hamburger looked like an alien
crab-like visitor on a flying saucer. Various operations made various
noises, all of them undesirable. Opening the front door to receive
the hamburger would result in a blast of steam in the face and a soggy
burger if one waiting too long, and if the clean cycle had already
started. Opening the back door to reload the various food tubes
triggered an interlock which caused the timing system to reset. That
meant that any burger in process had to be removed from the mechanism
before proceeding. The delivery door was too high to be reached by
children. As I vaguely recall, I found about 150 such deficiencies.
The problem was not fixing them, but rather convincing the various
members of the team that they should fix them. I managed to get a few
things fixed, but there was no way I could demand so many major
changes. It was rather fortunate that the project was terminated
prematurely or I would surely have been defenestrated by the other
members of the team.

One aspect of the project was rather unusual. There were security
leaks all over the project. Everyone knew that Compu-burger was
coming. It was decided that it would be helpful if we exaggerated the
capabilities of the machine to the known sources of the leaks, in an
effort to render the previously leaked information unreliable. I was
judged as having the most virulent imagination and soon found myself
producing reports, stories, and sketches describing features normally
found only in science fiction literature. As far as I could tell, it
mostly worked.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sat, 12 Apr 2014 17:50:00 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@gmail.com> wrote:
(...)
><snipped the rest, interesting though it was>

I found the manual for a commercial chain flame broiler at:
<http://www.cpsohio.com/app/load/manual1.aspx?id=MAR004>
On page 5, it provides instructions for 3 different cleaning
intervals. For daily, it's just scrape it clean with a brush and some
soapy water. No chemicals allowed. For monthly, add a steam
cleaning. Every 3 months, add a lube job on the conveyor belt.
Emulating all that in a robotic device is going to be tricky.

Perhaps robotic arms bearing a wire brush and steam hose?
<http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/kar-robot-arm-does-the-dishes-sort-of/>


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558