Really ecological cars shouldn't have leather seats, wooden dash...

[Fat Charlie]

Shipbuilders' union would raise all kinds of hell.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by Hersbird

How come they could build all that stuff on Gilligian's island but they couldn't fix a 2' hole in a boat?

Script writers hate smart people. "Smart" characters do things that intelligent real people know would never work, but sometimes it does. In short: Plot devices.

Also, I imagine that it is inherently difficult to write about people smarter than the writer.

[freebeard]

Or are the writer's smart enough to know that people will keep coming back for an episodal hit of schadenfreude?

(The floormats I like so much from Bamboomwagens are sea grass, not bamboo.)

[sgtlethargic]

Biomimicry (Also known as biomimetics) is very interesting.

Biomimetics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://biomimicry.net/

https://www.ted.com/talks/janine_ben...icry_in_action

[freebeard]

It's all biomimicry from the dug-out canoe to the iron horse. It's just that we're getting better at it.

None better than Ross Lovegrove.

It's sort-of-on-topic because he envisions electric cars impaled on power poles and erected to serve as street lights when they're not in use.

Edit: It turns out he's done a collaboration with Renault, the Twin'Z concept.


http://www.gizmag.com/ross-lovegrove...t-twinz/26980/

[elhigh]

Originally Posted by Xist

Also, I imagine that it is inherently difficult to write about people smarter than the writer.

I like to write. Nothing published (not in this decade anyway) and nothing especially deep, but I like the science fiction genre in particular. So I have to research and dig and learn and think and sweat my brain HARD to make my characters, who I prefer to be smart, competent people, sound smart and competent.

What they do in minutes takes me days to formulate. I like smart characters, but sometimes I effing hate writing smart characters.

[freebeard]

I'm going to contradict myself; Ross Lovegrove is good, but 'none better' would be Richard Buckminster Fuller. He came to free us from the prison created by René DesCartes all those years ago. With his Synergetics. Long story short, while we think in 3 dimensions at 90° to each other, nature uses 4 dimensions at 120° (our good friend, the Tetrahedron).

Instead of mimicing Nature, he perceived it very, very deeply. Like nanoscale deeply.

[freebeard]

Now I'm going to respond to myself. But only so it will bump the thread. I think this makes the wooden dash a 'should have'.

Arboform

http://www.tecnaro.de/english/willkommen.htm?section=we

Tecnaro take lignin from the waste stream from papermaking and combine it with cellulose fibers (like, from hemp, man) to make a zero-carbon, incineratable plastic material. Less ductile than petroleum based plastics and it produces more accurate castings. With the same thermal expansion coeeficient as wood, it's apparently a great substrate for veneers and inlays.

The thing I like is it's foamable! Wooden insulated monocoque, here we come.



"ARBOFORM® is liquid wood"

Edit: I see Wired has an article on a plastic/wood filament for 3D printers:

3-D Printing Branches Out With New Wood-Based Filament

They're mystified by the source of the raw material. I think it's Tecnaro.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by freebeard

It's sort-of-on-topic because he envisions electric cars impaled on power poles and erected to serve as street lights when they're not in use.

Why street lights, though? Consider something the size & weight of sunglasses that does light amplification, then you eliminate a lot of wasted energy, disruption of biorhythms, etc.

[freebeard]

Lovegrove is a weird dude. It's possible he just likes impaling cars. ...or maybe it gets them off the ground to give pedestrian access.

Night vision glasses is an interesting idea. It would need widespread adaptation before you could turn the street lights out though. And muggers would use flash-bang grenades.