My Favourite Things #2

There's really only one reason I want to watch The Day of the Jackal, and it isn't Edward Fox. In 1955 18 years of development culminated in Citroen's successor to the Traction Avant, the DS. The DS is simply unlike anything car ever made. Here's a picture:

The Prettiest of all things

I saw my first DS in a driveway in the Blue Mountains. The humidity had rusted the body- which was yellow anyway- and the tires had perished. The thing is, if the engine still worked and the suspension was all right, it would've driven without the tires. This was the first car in the world to have height adjustable hydropneumatic self-leveling suspension, which meant it didn't so much drive as glide. As is patently obvious, it was oddly yet iconically proportioned. The curves are simple yet striking, and the taper towards the back gives it an epic look to match the wallowing ride quality. The nose effortlessly combines the shape of a sixties Italian coupe (in 1955) with the separate fenders of the 30s, framed by double streamlined headlamps tailing into fender skirts.

This was one of the first cars with something approaching sequential shift. The clutch was hydraulically controlled, meaning you only had to ease up on the throttle to change gear using the column shift mounted next to the single spoke steering wheel. It was one of the first production cars to use electronic fuel injection, and the first to have front disc brakes. So your new BMW M3 has a carbon fibre roof to keep the centre of mass down? Well the DS had a fibreglass roof to do the same thing. In 1955. Until 1976.

The DS stayed in production for 21 years, undergoing very few changes, mostly a tiny bit of restyling, a few new gearboxes, and a gradual increase in engine power, since the DS was initially chronically underpowered. One thing it did gain was turning head lamps that allowed the driver to see around corners.

I was once told that engineering is a balance of many variables, and the DS is surely one of the most balanced machines of all time. The body styling is iconic without being garish, and aerodynamic to boot, and the technology is truly innovative without being gadgety. Its been called one of the most influential cars of the 20th century, yet nothing has ever come close in terms of individuality, and the DS remains ahead of its time even today.

If I were going to buy one (and I seriously hope to), I'd be aiming for the DS23 with the fuel injection and 5-speed manual, although that's mostly for the power. An earlier engine had hemispherical heads, and being able to say you have a hemi in a car like this offers tempting bragging rights. Swivelling headlights under streamlined glass is a must, and I'd go for an unassuming colour like beige or grey, although deep blue is also tempting. Although the yellow one I first saw is still rusting away in the Mountains...

One final thing. DS is pronounced déesse, which is the French word for Goddess. Oh my, its even got a pun for a name.

You can see some very pretty pictures here. be sure to checkout the detail photos too.

R.I.P, Microwave

Someone took our microwave from the collection pile today. The thing was about twenty years old, and had started making explosion noises when we turned it on, so we had to get a knew one. It's a pitty, becasue that thing was the easiest machine in the world to drive. Instead of having a bunch of buttons that said things like "Potatoes", it had two dials; one for power and one for time-which also spun backwards to act as the timer. Behind the doof frame was a sticker that had recommended times on it, nut it was really up to you how much you cooked things. The dials were huge, and had a nice bit of tactile feedback in them, unlike the squares you push on the new machine. It had no clock, and instead of a chime it had an actual bell that I think was connected to the timer dial. Unfortunately- as well as the aformentioned explosions- the sheilding was going, and it horrible fake wood veneer that was peeling off.
I'm not just getting nostalgic here. This was a machine that did just what it was supposed to and nothing more. The controls were uncluttered and intuitive, and didn't try and second guess what people wanted to do with it (what if I don't want to cook potatoes?). I kinda think that if you combined a modern magnetron with some dials and a lack of clock-and made it white- you could build a better microwave.

A List!

So its finally come to this, a list on Alias Mr Hackenbacker. To make up for the notable lack of science in the last post, I decided I needed an extra helping pretty damn quick. And since this is blog is notionally an attempt at science communication, I decided to make a list of the people who have made that job easier, the n best nerds of all time.

Randall Monroe: I'm guessing most of you know Randall as the guy who writes XKCD. That little web comic has done more to put a human face on geekiness than anything else.

Douglas Adams: Most people know Douglas Adams as the creator of Hitchhikers. But he was also a rampant nerd and mac user. a self taught science commentator, Adams used his profound wit to turn scientific concepts on their head. I can't really do it justice here, you should get Salmon of Doubt and read Is There an Artificial God?. Its up the back, around page 126.

Julius Sumner Miller: YOUR IGNORANCE MAKES ME ANGRY! I don't actually know much about Julius Sumner Miller, since he was on the telly before I was born. I do know that he basically invented science communication in this country, even though he was American. I do know he used to frighten people by going a bit mental when they couldn't keep up, or were a bit slow on the uptake, but it was science as it should be, driven by curiosity and hurtling blindly towards insight and conclusion without fear of the consequences.

Richard Feynmann: SEX! That's right. The adventuring bongo playing strip clubbing quantum mechanics guy. Feynmann was not content to accept other peoples theories if he didn't think they were good enough, and if he didn't like them he damn well made his own. They were right too.

Doc Emmet Brown: Probably the closest to a role model for scientists ever committed to film. The guy never let up, and people liked him too.

Carl Sagan: You want to know who put those plaques on space probes for the aliens to find? It was this guy. Sagan wrote Contact, made Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, and made being a scientist who thinks about aliens respectable. He campaigned against Nuclear Weapons, figured out a lot of that stuff you learnt about the planets in primary school. Science as hope, oh hell yeah.

Albert Einstein: All the stuff I wrote up there about the other guys applies to Uncle Albert.

TIME's Person of the Century

The Runners up: A few flaws here

Mythbusters: Scientific accuracy! No wait, explosions! Mythbusters is great, it promotes skepticism, and has a lot of fire and funny hats. But for whatever reason, it usually gets the scientific method wrong. Most often there's no control, and not enough control of the variables. Curiosity is great, but untested answers don't do it justice.

Brains: Brains from Thunderbirds is the Mr. Hackenbacker this blog is named after. He has a stutter, terrible glasses, and a pocket protector. But in the world of Thunderbirds he gets all the respect for building gigantic rescue machines and airships and such. The problem is, in real life, people aren't that obsessed with machines. He's a nerd who gets respect, but only in a world created by nerds.



The complete opposite: Some people who make things harder


Phil Plait: Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy website and book are supposed to dispel bad science and mistakes you see in the movies. That'd be great, if Phil wasn't so damn snarky.


Richard Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker is one of the best science books I've ever read. However, Dawkins recent tirades against religion make the scientific method sound like dogma, which is kind of the opposite of what he is trying to achieve.

And the Winner is...

I went to Toys'R'Us today, to look for the new Honda racer concept thing from Hot Wheels. I couldn't find it, but I did wander past the back wall, and remembered that I was going to right about the winner of a hypothetical 'Best toy ever for people who like science and stuff' competition, judged solely by me. The nominees are:

1. LEGO

2. My talking Einstein action figure with the flat batteries.

The winner is LEGO! Oh my, what a surprise. Consider, the entire LEGO range- from Duplo to mindstorm- is interconnectable. Blocks from 1968 will connect to blocks from last Friday. This is a level of standardisation that is higher than NASA's. Starting with Episode 1 in 1998/9, LEGO has used licenced characters, instead of in-house ranges. This gives it a huge marketing advantage (have you heard of K*NEX lately?), but since its kept the modularity, it hasn't sold out. There was a time there when the licenced kits had a lot of big specialty pieces that weren't "proper" LEGO, but the Indiana Jones and Batman lines seem to have reversed that. What all this means is that kids can make Batman and Han Solo fight the sorting hat, and isn't that the point of childhood?
The thing, the big thing, though, is the brickiness. Its all just some bricks you put together. You start with Duplo bricks the size of your fist, work up through pirates and space ships, build race cars in technic, and build robots with mindstorm as a final year project. And all the space ships and pirates and race cars and Batmen can be pulled apart and put together again to make some sort of racing space bat pirate.
So LEGO is basically a mashup of all the other toys. It truly is the best thing ever.