Tornado in a Can 383
geyser writes "What stuff matters more than a device that can tear things apart? Frank Polifka has a patent on his Windhexe device that creates a tornado force wind. Besides pulverizing concrete, it can pulverize small objects including jelly fish, and chicken feet without destroying the organic compounds. The chickens don't like it. Is this really a prototype Quake weapon? I could only find newspaper articles about the device. Has anyone seen it in action and can you give us a first hand report?"
Waste processing? (Score:5, Funny)
Hash: SHA1
" Whether there are vast riches to be made from pulverizing chicken poop or poultry parts into powder remains to be seen. The trick will be whether the machine can transform the various substances into products worth more than the processing costs."
Sounds like he's trying to kick up a real shitstorm.
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Actually (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Actually (Score:2)
Two reasons that would be really stupid: first, the amount of energy it would take is enormous. The energy is probably coming from a fossil-fuel power plant, so you're contributing to CO2 emissions.
Second, breaking up the organic material in the landfill would speed up biological activity (more surface area for the bacteria to grow on), leading to a huge increase in methane production in the short term (methane is also a greenhouse gas). I wouldn't want to be anywhere near such a landfill with a lit cigarette...
Re:Actually (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Actually (Score:2)
Re:Actually (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Actually (Score:2)
Re:Waste processing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't even get me started on the contents of haggis!
Re:Waste processing? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Waste processing? (Score:3, Funny)
Sheesh. What kind of a country is this?
Re:Waste processing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waste processing? (Score:3)
All prions are, essentially, is templates (i.e., molecules) around which other molecules fold to form the same shape... but the shape isn't the one that the body that made the protein wanted.
That's it. The thing would need to smash protein molecules to get rid of prions.
Re:Waste processing? (Score:5, Informative)
Yummy chicken!
Tornado in a *Box* (Score:5, Funny)
(No, seriously. The warranties are for, like, 2 years now. They slowly spin themselves apart until the data is nonsense.)
"it can pulverize ... jelly fish" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"it can pulverize ... jelly fish" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"it can pulverize ... jelly fish" (Score:5, Funny)
If it can destroy stone, then jelly fish is a given, is it not?
Hell, every jelly fish I seen came pre-pulverised.
How does it work on wet noodles or oatmeal?
Re:"it can pulverize ... jelly fish" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"it can pulverize ... jelly fish" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"it can pulverize ... jelly fish" (Score:3, Funny)
Human Feet!! (Score:2)
HAHAHA, the damn thing takes care of human feet just as well as chickens. And I thought it was just s snake-in-a-can joke. Damn toys
At last! (Score:4, Funny)
Remember what they said in Spider-Man.... (Score:5, Funny)
[ I Found His Patent Application ] (Score:5, Informative)
It's dated March 7, 2002 and the applicant is listed as Polifka, Francis D..
You can read it at http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=
Kansas, even! (Score:2)
Notice that Francis is from Kansas.
Re:Kansas, even! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:[ I Found His Patent Application ] (Score:5, Funny)
Samples of this product.... (Score:5, Funny)
Toys R' "Gonna Kill" Us (Score:2, Funny)
Now that will ROCK!!!
What a waste(no pun intended)... (Score:5, Funny)
Damn...what a waste of Oreo's
Re:What a waste(no pun intended)... (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like a church casserole.
Re:What a waste(no pun intended)... (Score:5, Funny)
Nature's fury tamed
A mighty vortex unleashed
Grinds poop to powder.
A free CD falls
One thousand hours now becomes
One million fragments.
Re:What a waste(no pun intended)... (Score:2, Funny)
Isn't that the secret sauce on a Big Mac?
Re:What a waste(no pun intended)... (Score:2)
Re:What a waste(no pun intended)... (Score:4, Funny)
Uh, hehe, hehe, put a dead bird in it, hehe, hehe.
Yeah! Yeah! Cool!
Hehe, hehe, I'm a scientist.
So they made a really big blender... (Score:2, Funny)
No PHBs... (Score:5, Funny)
Even so, it took him 15 years to make a tornado in a can that he was satisfied with. And though physicists and engineers are at a loss as to how exactly it works, he's happy to explain how he made it.
It sounds like this guy is about as far removed from shedules and deadlines as anyone I have ever seen....
Re:No PHBs... (Score:4, Funny)
Crack Pots Win Again (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Crack Pots Win Again (Score:5, Funny)
Or, in this case, thinking in the can. ;)
Isn't that where everyone does their best thinking anyway?
Re:Crack Pots Win Again (Score:4, Insightful)
Education does not make you smart, but neither does lack of education. And in general, problem-solving's easier when you have more than intuition in your toolkit.
that's nice but .... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:that's nice but .... (Score:5, Funny)
Confirm? (Score:2)
Engineers shut it down and quickly huddle, mulling over a complex mathematical solution they think might help them fix the noise.
But Polifka, a stocky man with a snow-white beard and twinkling eyes, just opens the machine, grabs a broom handle and pokes at a flap of metal inside the cone. The adjustment made, he shuts the machine and starts it again. The noise is gone.
He sounds like Santaclause... and a magician.
Re:Confirm? (Score:2)
[fb.com]
http://www.fb.com/programs/waterheroes/2001/upd
Chicken Backs (Score:5, Funny)
"Each year, the U.S. poultry industry generates about 4 million tons of blood, feathers, heads, feet and entrails, including some 300,000 tons on the Delmarva Peninsula."
I thought they had this problem licked with the advent of the chicken McNugget."Running that material through a drier and then through Polifka's machine could produce a powder form of those poultry byproducts that could be sold as a flavoring"
Geek #1:"Mmmmm,these Gorditas are wonderful!!"Geek #2:"Yeah, but they could use a little more chicken back if you ask me."
Re:Chicken Backs (Score:2)
Oh man that's disgusting. Those fuckers better put that crap in fertalizer or where those "fill needed" signs are... not in my food!
What he said.
Obligatory Wayne's World Semi-Quote... (Score:2)
Wayne: "Well, it definitely does suck"
Wait 'til the military gets this one.
Does Lewis Carr Work for Bush? (Score:2, Funny)
Tornado in a can? (Score:5, Funny)
It looks to me like a tornado in a room. Judging by that picture, this will work great as a prototype Quake weapon. You just have to tell your enemy "OK, now sit right here under this blue cone looking thing, while I pulverize you".
Not exactly portable is it?
Gag reflex in a Jar! (Score:4, Funny)
I think I'll pass on the company pizza party.
Industrial Strength Whoop-Ass.... (Score:2)
Vacuum cleaners (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.dyson.co.uk/ [dyson.co.uk].
One shudders to think what teenage boys might get up to with it
The BOfH seetest dream... (Score:5, Funny)
Who's there? - says the BOfH with some irritation that someone messed with his chance to break his 1374th frag record.
Oh, this is department XXX. You have a problem, the network doesn't work.
Couldn't you say that by the phone?..
Oh, well. We could but it was busy and we thought it was a lot easier to talk to you directly...
Well, come in... - The BOfH presses the button and the door opens...
Ooops sorry what is this funny small dark room here?
Oh, well. That's a small hall to avoid noises and dust coming up here. We have some sensitive equipement here... Just close the outdoor so I can open the inner door...
Oh, cool. Yeah, you amy be right, you have quite a dusty corridor just outside, you kn.. BAHM! FRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!
A bunch of dust flows over the corridor, the BOfH calmly concludes: "No person, no problem... back to the game..."
What's in a name? (Score:4, Funny)
Some nasty trojan that's a tornado for your HD?
Re:What's in a name? (Score:2)
Soylent Green (Score:3, Interesting)
"The single most important quality of the tornado in a can is whatever goes into it comes out with its nutritional value," he said. "You can get four times the price of nonedible waste."
With the population growth being what it is and the cost of burial plots skyrocketing, how long before Soylent Green is a reality???
It does matter - people will care... (Score:3, Insightful)
I just hope the dried meal they make from chicken parts isn't fed to other chickens (and hopefully they aren't doing the same with cows on the beef meal made - surely we learned that lesson - then again, look at everything else)...
Re:It does matter - people will care... (Score:2)
Re:It does matter - people will care... (Score:3, Interesting)
Kuru (named after a people in New Guinea?), aka CJD (I think) came from the natives ritual of "eating the dead" - a relative would die, the family would "eat" the relative, then those members would get the disease, die from it, then others would eat them, and so on.
What I find odd about the whole thing, is why this has only recently (relatively) cropped up. In the case of Mad Cow, one can almost say "Well, it is only happenning now because we didn't feed animals to herbivores, or within the same species" - but that only makes limited sense:
You do have a point, rodgerd - chickens will (at minimum) kill other chickens, and peck at them, eating the kill to a certain extent (my parents raised chickens, I remember this happening since you mentioned it) - I am certain it is more common in the wild. Furthermore, human culture has practiced canabilism in the past, and the Kuru tribe certainly practiced their ritual prior to the discovery of in in the 1950's - so why is it only "now" (ie, since the 1950's) that prion-related diseases have come forth? If this was an issue that has occurred often in the past, why didn't the Kuru people get wiped out long before? They never thought that the dead relatives were bad for them to eat - they thought they died from being possessed by demons (or something to that effect from what I have read) - so why didn't the cycle continue until the very end, a long time ago?
The only answer I can come up with is that prions have somehow either been woken up, or have been introduced in some manner into human culture - most likely accidentally from some form of processing (I wouldn't doubt meat processing, but it could be something else). Anybody have other reasonings?
The scary thing is that it won't even matter if you go vegetarian or vegan - it has been postulated that prions exist nearly everywhere, and quite possibly that animals (including us) are born with them - and that something triggers them to make them into the crazy, murderous, pseudo-DNA/RNA that they are...
Frightening...
the witch wants to know (Score:3, Funny)
gah! (Score:3, Interesting)
(b) a lower enclosure disposed below and in a tandem arrangement with said upper enclosure, said lower enclosure including a lower annular sidewall having a substantially inverted conical configuration and open upper and lower ends and defining a lower interior chamber, said lower annular sidewall of said lower enclosure being mounted at said open upper end thereof to said upper annular sidewall at said open lower end of said upper enclosure such that said lower annular sidewall and lower interior chamber of said lower enclosure are substantially continuous and in flow communication with said upper annular sidewall and upper interior chamber of said upper enclosure...
Ok, one, that's one sentence, and two, the word "said" appears there 11 times. I felt like I was listening to "Einstein on the beach" again.
But apart from that, it (and the rest of the patents) describes the thing, and it's not a tornado gun like most of y'all are hypothesizing. It's...well, it's basically a wind-powered coffee grinder - no blades, just wind. So you can forget about pointing it at someone and watching their molecules randomly rearrange themselves, k?
Triv
Pulverizing chicken feet! (Score:3, Funny)
More info (Score:4, Informative)
Polifka's webpage for the Windhexe [archive.org]
oops, here's a better link (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More info (Score:2, Funny)
"A chicken mortality is placed in the machine...the chicken is ground to the consistency of oily cotton".
The guy dropping the chicken into this machine is certainly inspiration for a
Cremation made easy. (Score:5, Funny)
Does the thought of being burned like yesteryear's garbage after you die curl your toes?
With the new Tornadoom swirly treatment you can be pulverized into ashes without the messy, smoking, hellish addition of flame.
Remember the first time a bully flushed your head in the mens room in Jr. High? Well now you can go out in full geek colors. The Tornadoom is like a permanent swirly that lasts forever. Make your shame of the past an eternal badge of honor.
Reduce the cost of burial to your family. For only $12/hr in electrical costs, you can be ground into dry powder. You can then be used to fertalize the garden, be a pet-food additive, or achieve any one of several higher self-fulfilling goals.
When you go to your funeral director to plan for that ever-coming day of doom, ask for Tornadoom!
Finally a legitimate patent on a real invention (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, someone will hook it up to a computer and obtain a new patent for 'Method of using a tornado in a can with a computer'
Oh well, something may never change.
Re:Legitimate ... and a shame (Score:5, Insightful)
The inventor - seeing that his invention could too easily be copied by a large multinational - decides not to risk money for nothing, but instead goes back to his real job, farming.
No invention. No innovation.
We see a lot of this kind of behavior in the software industry today. Microsoft has made such a business of stealing other people's useful ideas, there isn't much innovation left anymore - outside of the hundreds of freeware grad-student projects that makes up the backbone of Gnu/Open Source/Linux.
Now I am not defending the joke software patents have become either, where adding "...with a computer!" is considered "innovation" by our rubber stamp patent office. But some degree of protection is needed, including both a comment period and a looser pays system for claims.
Effectively the problem with patents is twofold:
1] It is too easy to get a bogus patent, with which you can bully people who don't have the legal resources to fight your ludicrous claim. [youcouldbenext.com]
2] It is too easy for large companies to simply ignore small patents, knowing that judges are very reluctant to enforce the law against them (it's not just Microsoft that gets this kind of special treatment, Intel is famous for this [intergraph.com]).
Bah (Score:2)
What is going on (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, vortex technology is quite respectable nowadays. As well as the Dyson cleaner, which gets more effective with each generation, there is the work on vortex particulate removers for Diesel engines and powder paint shops. The basic principle seems to be that the air is made to spiral down the vortex chamber in ever narrowing circles. As it does so, its angular velocity increases so that particulates experience an increasing force which carries them to the vortex walls.
Now, in a conventional vortex cleaner, you want non-turbulent flow to keep those particles going in the right direction. But what if the flow becomes turbulent? As it breaks up you would have small localised regions of extremely high turbulence in an environment of increasing angular momentum - so that instead of having a turbulent flow of air scrubbing a single surface, you could have lots of small turbulent flows in three dimensions. That sounds like a pretty effective way of abrading things with a soft medium that would do what is claimed.
So why does the Post talk about scientists being baffled? Well, as a 2c worth, perhaps it's because they have to talk up the story and perhaps it's because the journo didn't know the difference between a vortex chamber and a plate of gefulte fish and wanted to report that everybody else stood around looking stupid too. (In view of the Dow Jones case decision in Australia perhaps I should add this is just my personal opinion, wild speculations, journalists are all genius saviours of mankind etc.)
Perhaps the next Dyson cleaner will not just pick up the dust but act as a dry waste disposal unit as well. Or perhaps not.
But, but Muad'Dib.... (Score:2)
Re:But, but Muad'Dib.... (Score:2, Interesting)
May David Lynch be cursed forever for adding such a stupid concept to an otherwise awesome movie. That, and the damn rain at the end.
Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
Inside the henhouse (Score:2)
They could have left out the details...
I know one place where it's being used already... (Score:2)
one question about the article (Score:5, Funny)
CAUTION (Score:4, Funny)
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!!!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Tornado in a can? (Score:2)
masochistic jellyfish (Score:3, Funny)
What, the jellyfish do??
They're going to feed us what?? (Score:3, Insightful)
You know some guy down at the sewer treatment plant is saying "hey Larry.. I'll bet I could convince someone that its food.."
I think it's about time I start shopping at the farmer's market...
Re:They're going to feed us what?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, treated sewage sludge is regularly used to grow vegetables.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Toxic/sewadge_s
Re:They're going to feed us what?? (Score:3, Insightful)
You HAVE eaten hotdogs haven't you? Same difference.
DISEASE VECTOR!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's supposed that he got it from eating beef contaminated by BSE, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, which is a prion disease spread through the industry practice of feeding butcher's waste to cattle.
Cannibalism is bad, people. Ref. Oliver Sach's description of diseases among the descendants of cannibals. It's an unhealthy feedback loop, that optimizes disease organisms.
So, the poultry farmers have already spread salmonella through the entire US chicken industry with their unsound practices, now they want to do it better, cheaper, faster.
So much for chicken soup as health food.
Prions are molecules... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, Mr. Gates!!! (Score:2)
Soylent Green is a reality now I suppose (Score:3, Funny)
Yech... (Score:2, Funny)
Wife: With or without egg membranes?
Uranium Extraction (Score:2, Funny)
Going from a ton of yellocake to a few grams of u235 is an EXPENSIVE, slow process.
Now if you could do it for 12$/hr, and without using all the export controlled machinery
Invalid Patent (Score:3, Funny)
Fargo remake? (Score:3, Funny)
A real way to keep PCBs and such from the landfill (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of it! Go down to the corner Tornado-in-a-can and feed it your old motherboard, monitor, TV, anything! Its a geek dream: pulverize something to tiny bits, recycle useable hardware, get some money back at the same time!
Prior Art? (Score:4, Interesting)
Looks like another 50-year-old technology has found a use doing something it wasn't originally designed for.
not quite as good as a plasma torch (Score:3, Interesting)
dangerous compounds and generating energy at the
same time.
It's really interesting stuff.
http://gtalumni.org/StayInformed/magazine/sum02
Re:Edible Waste? (Score:2)
Re:Edible Waste? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Does this mean... (Score:2)
Taz is to the Tasmanian devil as Ariel is to The Little Mermaid. The former is mass market pablum for the kiddies; the latter is an old classic stolen by soulless copyright-extending corporations.
Re:Why does chicken walk into tornado (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you, I'll be here all week.
Re:Nutritional value (Score:3, Funny)
You mean chickenshit, don't you?