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Projects to find the limits of what is possible right now?

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cdev:
We have lots of ways to make amino acids, industrial processes with yeasts etc, which will give you high quality food grade amino acids. For cheap.

So if your business case is making amino acids, look elsewhere.

That said, there are things that could be done with human hair to use it. It might add nitrogen or porosity to soil, like chicken shit, bird droppings, etc, it could be used as a soil amendment. It could also be used in clay based building materials, like bricks or used in clay pots.

Some time ago I had a dog who produced a LOT of fur, kind of like owning your own personal sheep. I used to save his fur in shopping bags and when I accumulated a lot of it I gave it to people who made it into sweaters. Fur like that has a lot of uses. Its best use is likely its natural function, as insulation. It would make good insulation of almost any kind. It didn't smell.


--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 24, 2019, 10:04:32 pm ---
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 24, 2019, 09:09:18 pm ---Well, I don't know what is your own definition of "wrong" here, in both cases.
--- End quote ---
Well, people happily eat pink slime and chicken washed in chlorine at the Lard of the Free, don't they?
I don't think chemical extraction of amino acids from any source is any worse, if the end result is clean.

--- End quote ---

Electro Detective:
The post is getting a bit gritty now  :o

The deleted comment re  'eating anything to survive'  may fly ok in the movies, and sell lots of attention seeking liars books, but just try it for real and see how you scrub up

especially when choking to death on stuck 'kernals'  :popcorn:  and rat bones due to a parched dry throat and toxic filled constipated intestinal tract etc


Good luck finding any rats or mice btw, they usually hang out where there is FOOD and wood panels/walls to chew through for access

They won't be digging through bricks or oxy torching steel panels to risk becoming food for human captives,
especially if they can't smell a drawcard on the other side, and human waste smells ain't it    :phew:

Good luck catching them too, when your energy and speed levels are at snail pace. 

Gotta love Hollywood BS...  :palm:

Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: cdev on January 25, 2019, 12:15:52 am ---Yes it is, even if its sterilized so its no longer contaminated with all kinds of diseases, bacteria, fungi and parasites, its still going to have a witches brew of heavy metals etc.
--- End quote ---
Well, that would be analogous to a cheap and cheerful small gadget that occasionally electrocutes you, wouldn't it?


--- Quote from: Electro Detective on January 25, 2019, 12:29:05 am ---The post is getting a bit gritty now  :o
--- End quote ---
Well, to be honest, I wouldn't mind eating rat meat if I knew it was a wild one, and not say Nth generation sewer rat.  So rat is not the offensive part; the offensive part is that typical rats are full of diseases, chemicals, bacteria, viruses, and parasites with their own bacteria, viruses, and parasites. EU didn't ban chlorine washed chicken because it was dangerous, but because it is only needed when you grow your chickens in insane conditions ignoring all basic hygiene.

In electronics, having there be cheap chinesium USB wall warts that usually won't zap you or your devices on the market is not the problem; the problem is when you cannot tell which ones are reliable and which ones are those dangerous cheapies.  (I don't buy anything like those from fleabay for exactly that reason.)

By extension, having LED lamps and USB wall warts that are okay and cheap is not a problem; the problem is when you assume that that is the best we can do, and plan accordingly.

Even in the software world, the fact that most programs are not that reliable, and occasionally crash and lose your data, is not a problem.  It only becomes a problem when it becomes the norm and expected, even when it could be easily avoided.  (I mean, I don't expect perfect software. I just expect users to complain if the software crashes too often, instead of just shrugging that oh well, there went your data, nothing I can do, thanks for your money and pity that happened to you, computer says no, bye.)

Finding out the limits of actually what is possible right now, if nothing else, gives some perspective to examine what we have accepted as a norm, and a point to compare to.

cdev:
Good friends and family are worth a lot.

Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: cdev on January 25, 2019, 12:26:39 am ---Some time ago I had a dog who produced a LOT of fur, kind of like owning your own personal sheep. I used to save his fur in shopping bags and when I accumulated a lot of it I gave it to people who made it into sweaters.
--- End quote ---
When I was a kid, my neighbor did the same, just to see if it could be done.  The dogs we had (Finnish Spitz mix from the same litter) had too coarse outer coat, but the inner coat made rough, but passable "wool".  My parents house had a cyclone-based central vacuum cleaner (which did not mind large quantities of dog fur), and in the spring, our dog loved to get rid of the hot fluffier winter undercoat by brushing and vacuuming it off.  He also used to pre-warm my bed whenever I was going to sleep. I never needed to shoo him, as he always left of his own volition when I was about to go to sleep -- with a few head scritches as the obligatory thank-you, of course.  Much nicer than a sweater, methinks.

He was an odd mutt.  Loved fresh carrots.  Drove squirrels from up to a kilometer away to the pines surrounding our house, and often lost his voice for a day or two afterwards.  Ate all the voles around the greenhouse.  Hated reindeer with passion; might have eaten one or two, but we don't talk about that.  Let little kids ride him and tug his fur without complaint (quickly slipping away if they were too rough), but almost ate two Watchtower-leaflet-offerers when we weren't at home: didn't mind visitors when we were at home, but barked and growled like a gremlin if he was the only one home.  And obviously considered himself a four-footed human.

Because of him, and my brothers' dogs, I've always been interested in those gadgets that purport to analyze dogs' brainwaves or vocalizations.  That is one of the fields where what is technically possible is way ahead of what is really feasible in the financial/commercial sense.  In particular, FMRI imaging to compare their brain activity in different contexts has shown that the human-canine relationship is not just about food, shelter, and companionship; the interaction is deep and mutual bonding real.

So, as an example of an electronic project to find what is possible right now, consider dog sensor bands, a large storage and processing backend, and humans with cell phone apps or something like that to record their understanding of the dogs intent/vocalization/expressions.  You'd need a lot of them, with very little to gain financially (compared to the cost of the system), but even statistically (considering that the humans' interpretations will have significant error), there would be a lot to learn there.  As far as I see, the existing forays in this direction ("translator bands", basically everything except medical research) have been attempts to fleece off money off pet owners, because they're often happy to buy such gadgets even when they know they don't work.

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