2929: Good and Bad Ideas

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Good and Bad Ideas

Title text: While it seemed like a fun prank at the time, I realize my prank fire extinguishers full of leaded gasoline were a mistake.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD- Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This is a scatter plot comparing how good an idea sounds to how good the idea actually is. For example, leaded gasoline sounds like a good idea due to the anti-knocking effects, but is actually a bad idea due to lead toxicity. Fake prank fire extinguishers however sound bad and are bad as they can result in a dangerous situation in an emergency. Putting mold on infections sounds like a bad idea, but this could be referring to Penicillin, an antibiotic.

The title text combines leaded gasoline and a fake prank fire extinguisher into something that is worse than either. Not only is the fire extinguisher fake, it also releases flammable material onto the fire, and there is the additional lead toxicity.

Idea	What it means	How good it sounds	How good it actually is	Explanation
Leaded Gasoline	Adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline to increase performance	++	---	Lead is toxic. Burning the leaded gasoline in an engine releases the lead in the air. This is bad.
Bloodletting	Releasing "bad blood" from the veins	---	---	You need your blood.[citation needed] Bloodletting has been performed as a medical procedure for at least 2000 years until it was considered pseudoscience from the 19th century, when the harmful effects became known. The idea was to withdraw blood to balance the body's "humors". Nowadays phlebotomy is only used therapeutically in a small number of cases, such as hemochromatosis (too much iron in the body).
Asbestos	Mineral which does not burn and is good isolation	+++	---	Asbestos was used extensively. Sadly the microscopic fibers which make up asbestos greatly increase the risk of cancer when inhaled.
Extension cords with prongs on both ends	allows easy connection between 2 female connectors	0 (neutral)	---	Prongs on both ends would make it easier to plug the extension cord in on either side. But once plugged into an outlet, the other end becomes a serious shock hazard.
Stair Kayaking		--	---	Stair kayaking is a stunt where a person positions a kayak at the top of a flight of stairs and then, using their paddle to push off, rides the kayak down the stairs. This poses significant risks of injury or death, as well as being very bad for the kayak, which is designed to ride on water, not concrete.
Fake prank fire extinguishers		---	---	The idea of placing fake fire extinguishers as a prank, presumably so that a person who thinks they are grabbing a real fire extinguisher will instead find a decoy, sounds very dangerous and potentially life-threatening for many people, and it would, in fact, be highly dangerous. In the United States, (and presumably most countries), this would also be a felony in most, if not all, jurisdictions. An example of a similar situation, although not intended as a prank, can be found here[1]
Always saying what you think	...regardless of the feelings of others or other considerations	++	--
Replying to spammers	Clicking on the "Reply" button from spam mails and writing (and sending) a reply (or worse, clicking on the links in these mails)	--	--
Solar cars	Having solar panels on the car's surface (mostly hood and roof) for power generation	+++	-
Heelies	Heelys are shoes with a wheel in the sole, at the back of the shoe	+	-	Heelys allow the wearer (usually children) to shift between normal walking and rolling like a roller skate. This sounds like fun but has lead to numerous injuries.
Prequels	A work of fiction (mostly movie) telling the "story before the story" of another work of fiction.	+++	-
Transition Lenses	Photochromic lenses in glasses get darker (like sunglasses) in bright light.	+	-
Cutting pizza in squares	Cutting (a pesumably round) pizza in squares	-	-	Most people cut pizza into wedges and hold it by the crust. Cutting it into squares allows for more pieces to be shared, but pieces near the center will have no crust to hold it by, getting cheese and sauce all over your fingers. There will also be lots of leftover tiny pieces. While hardly a disaster like the other items in its quadrant, square pizza pieces are just not very useful and rather inefficient.
Project Orion	Study by the U.S. government looking into nuclear pulse propulsion for spacecraft.	---	-	Repeated nuclear explosions in order to move sounds bad for both the spacecraft and everything else, especially with a ground launch. But there are ways to address a lot of the concerns, so it isn't as bad as it sounds. Project Orion's theorized specific impulse and thrust would also be far higher than anything chemical rockets can accomplish. The efficiency of Project Orion is extremely low, however.
Soup	Soup	0 (neutral)	0 (neutral)
Combo washer dryers	A device which combines washing machine and laundry dryer into one device	+++	+
Cutting sandwiches diagonally	Cutting sandwiches diagonally	+	+
Diverging diamond interchanges	Road junction where the two road direction cross over to switch sides (so if you normally drive on the right, now you drive on the left) then switch back to normal after the junction	-	+
Toasting sandwiches		++	++
Crumple zones	Designated areas of a car that crumple in case of a crash...	--	++	...to absorb the energy of the crash to prevent damage to the passengers
Sliced bread	Bread, sliced by the baker before packaging for sale	+++	++	It's far more convenient for making sandwiches or toast, but unfortunately presliced bread will go stale faster and some applications may be better off thicker or thinner than the slices provided.
Pizza	Flat, though usually leavened, bread with tomato sauce, cheese, and often vegetables or preserved meats	++	++	Pizza is a widely popular dish throughout much of the world, uncontroversial except certain toppings.
Eating citrus fruit while at sea		0 (neutral)	+++	The vitamin C present in citrus fruits prevents one from contracting scurvy.
Putting mold on infections	Seemingly a reference to ancient practice of pressing moldy bread against infected wounds	---	++	While this sounds like a good way to get a fungal infection, with the correct mold this is a primitive antibiotic, and led to the discovery of penicillin.
Wheels on luggage	Some luggage bags have small wheels inset on their frame and a carrying handle.	+++	+++	A relatively simple fitting for rigid or semi-rigid luggage that substantially eases its transport through air and seaport terminals.
Heat pumps	Refrigeration (or air conditioning) technology operated in reverse to heat an area instead.	++	+++	Because refrigeration is a very efficient way to move heat (as long as the cold side's temperature is high enough) this is often far more energetically efficient than directly heating a space. Reversible heat pumps also exist which can take care of both temperature needs in some climates.
Laser eye surgery	Surgical techniques using lasers for precision cutting in the eyeball.	-	+++	This technology has substantially improved the eyesight of millions of people worldwide by allowing treatment of eye problems otherwise only corrected by lenses, or entirely untreatable. Randall has previously commented on laser eye surgery, amongst other ideas both good and bad, in 1681: Laser Products.
Fecal transplants	Transfer of gut microbiom of healthy person to sterilised gut of ill person	---	+++	Gut microbiom is a collection of bacteria that lives in our guts. It can influence our health. It is responsible for last stages of digesting our food. It can also produce neurotransmitters that are carried by blood to our brain influencing our behaviour. A healthy microbiom can be destroyed by bad eating habits, unhealthy lifestyle, infections or antibiotics. The important part is a composition of different species of bacteria that compromise the biom. Sometimes it may be necessary to completely sterilise the gut and then take the sample of healthy biom from another person. A sample is enough as the bacteria will multiply. As long as the patient eats correctly, the microbiom after transplant should develop correctly. It sounds bad because we tend to think of our feces as something gross, to be discarded. It is called facal transplant as our feces contain about 50% of gut bacteria, but nowadays the sample usually has a form of a coted pill that is applied rectally.

Transcript

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Discussion

Lots of bread/food in the "good" quadrant; I think Randall is hungry. 162.158.154.73 05:33, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

FYI bread -- all bread -- is actually toxic and harmful to us.... Currently, there are three ways this occurs:

- USDA organic standards permit the application of Round-Up (glyphosphate, an herbicide/weedkiller)

to 'organic' wheat -- after it has been harvested. Reason is so they can harvest while it is still green (rather than mature dried-out golden)... Then apply the weedkiller in order to kill & desiccate it... Which lets them faster turn-over, shorter crop cycles, more production per time.
. Unsurprisingly, things designed to kill life are bad for us. (causes cancer and nerve damage)

- secondly the manner of harvesting wheat and turning it into bread changed since the industrial revolution... I do not recall the specific detail but it is more inflammatory now.

- Third, alas heating a number of various foods above the boiling point of water leads to more drastic biochemical changes in the molecules... ... This includes nuts/seeds, meat, & grains. see california p65 re: bread. . causes cancer. . trivia: anthropologists & medical doctors several hundred years ago visiting the americas found that nomadic forager/gatherer tribes were usually in better health, lived longer, & had fewer incidents of tumors (post-mortem autopsies, even in those days) compared to nations or tribes with a history (even pre-euro-contact) of sedentary/agrarian/farming communities. guess this is due to less diversity in diet, incl greens, less exercise, but also the rise in cultivated grains or cereals like maize. still better than the hellhole we are in today... 172.71.151.96 20:10, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Soup always seems like a very good idea to me. I guess I like soup. --172.69.79.182 07:15, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I remember something like this in what if. SectorCorruptor 07:21, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

The title immediately reminded me on the Animaniacs shorts "Good Idea / Bad Idea" Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 07:33, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Does anybody know why solar cars and transitions lenses are actually a bad idea? 172.70.160.173 09:11, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Transitions lenses are misplaced. The only caveat is that if you like outdoor photography (landscapes, wildlife, etc.) you should get grey lenses rather than brown ones, because the brown ones make a blue sky seem overcast. Pjt33 (talk) 09:22, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

The precise opposite is true. Grey lenses make all things - blue sky included - look greyer, as is perhaps unsurprising. Brown tints involve a degree of orange, which means the overall impression is of a "warmer" colour pallette, rather than simply a duller one. There is a reason that "grey skies" and "overcast" mean exactly the same thing - an overcast sky is a grey tinted filter. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 09:48, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

But perceived colour isn't the same as the actual colour hitting the retina: the brain corrects it. A blue sky filtered through a grey lens is still perceived as blue, but I find that a blue sky filtered through a brown lens appears grey. This is from personal experience: I switched from grey Transitions to brown ones because the frame that I liked was a brassy colour, and I regretted it when I next went out for bird photography. 188.114.111.152 09:22, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

I think the Transition lens issue is primarily that the bright light that can turn them dark need not be heading into the eye. With the Sun (say) off at an angle, it could be 'reacting' your lenses to dark needlesly, and reducing your ability to discern the things in front of you (which may be in shadow), working against the basic ability of the eye to adjust itself as per observed illumination.

Conversely, a small bright light would not sufficiently darken the lenses but be still damaging to the spot(s) it falls upon in your retina (or do the "whole lens go dark" thing and still be too bright even as you can't see anything else beyond it). This might also be combined with the general secondary problem of potentially all regular sunglasses/goggles, that aren't industrial-grade or specific solar-specs, in that it might make it look safe to stare at bright things/skies through them but you cannot tell how much UV/etc is also being filtered out (some brands do have notable UV protection, but you really have to trust their claims/certifications – unless you have your own testing kit and knowledge of how much is good/bad anyway).

I'd add that, but it needs a sharper explanation than I just gave. I'd like to make what's already there snappier, before that, plus correct the numerous typos and funny formatting (and lack of useful wikilinks), but will probably leave that to others with the time. 172.71.242.204 10:08, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Just as a note while we're here: "fecal transplant" is one of the most spectacular branding failures in the history of medical science, in my opinion. I mean, don't put the word "fecal" in anything you want people to feel positively about. And "microbiome transplant" is sitting right there, ready to serve.108.162.242.37 10:44, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Double plug cords are VERY MUCH a bad idea. Used mostly to plug generators into an outlet to power a house, it tends to harm people working on the power lines who were not expecting them to be charged when the power was out. The statement about them being hard to use, is quite the understatement. OSHA, written in blood. 172.70.115.103

How can soup be bland? There are bland soups, spicy soups, sweet soups, savory soups ... you can't call an entire very broad category of food "bland" like that. It makes no sense.Nitpicking (talk) 11:46, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I think they may have meant bland as in boring, not tasteless. I'll tweak it. Barmar (talk) 16:20, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Citation format needed. (heelies) 172.70.178.103 (talk) 12:57, 7 May 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Summary: (I don't know how to format correctly.) - no, you don't...

For a link to an external URL, writting [the_url] will give you a "linked number", but a better format is using [the_url text to replace] (with a space betwixt the URL and the text that will link to it. e.g. a link to google from [https://google.com a link to google].

There are full on citation/reference methods, but mostly I wouldn't bother with <cite> and <ref> tags at all.

Internal links, with [[]]s, and template-based ones, with {{}}s (e.g. the nicely-linking shortcut to wikipedia pages), use a pipe (the "|") between the sections. But you should be able to work that out by looking at what is already in the edit-source.

If in doubt, Preview your intended change and see if it looks right. I'll let you correct your contribution. Or whoever else wants to shake up the whole article, as it has multiple problems from spelling mistakes to inconsistent style to repeating information and it needs a lot of rationalising that I can't even think of doing right now. 172.69.195.113 14:09, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I didn't realize we actually have no citation templates. Quite a few pages have the actual citation needed template but not many of them ever get those citations. I think a lot of citations get put in just as external links. I probably should've done that but I was like oh I know how to do this from my small amount of Wikipedia editing, I'll just use the cite web template... oh we don't have that. So rather than just do an ad-hoc link I created the citation in my Wikipedia sandbox then manually recreated the formatting. But now it feels weird and out of character for this wiki so maybe someone should just change it to a link. idk, maybe being inconstant is exactly what is in-character for this wiki. Brycemw (talk) 15:10, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I changed it to a link. I've seen the occasional citations section in this wiki, iirc, but we general just do links :) Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 07:02, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

As a Columbus native, I am HIGHLY offended by this anti–rectangular pizza slice speech. Rectangular pizza is by far the BEST shape that a pizza can be. (I'm not really offended, but I really do think rectangular pizza is superior.) 108.162.216.229 14:04, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Sicilian pizza should be square and cut into square slices, Neapolitan pizza should be round and cut into sectors. The extra thickness of Sicilian means you don't eat it by holding the crust and folding, so the shape of the slices is less critical. But this does mean that the middle slices have no crust around the edges. Barmar (talk) 16:25, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Crimes! --162.158.95.11 21:19, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

The pizzas at the Maryland USA-based Ledo Pizza chain are all square or rectangular, and cut into a grid of smaller squares. There is plenty of demand for non-round pizza to support their 125 locations in nine states and DC. -- These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 02:54, 12 May 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Leaded gasoline isn't to reduce *noise*. The noise is a symptom of detonation (aka knock), which is the real problem. Knock is caused by pressures and temperatures high enough and for long enough to detonate the fuel/air mixture (as opposed to the deflagration initiated by the spark plug at a set time), and can result in engine damage. Leaded gasoline (through complicated chemistry) increases the pressure/temperature required to get that detonation, and thus allows the engine to be designed to run at higher temperatures and compression ratios, which is where the efficiency improvements come from. 172.70.39.41 14:38, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, cross-reference "Sliced bread" to 1065:_Shoes and 1885:_Ensemble_Model (with sliced bread in both comic and title-text).

I think that the phrase "best thing since a sliced bread" refers to sliced bread in general (as opposed to eating the bread directly or tearing pieces of it) and not specifically bread pre-sliced before buying.

Also, heat pumps, whole not DESIGNED to heat by itself, actually have a limit for how big difference in temperature they can operate in. Outside this limit, they work quite badly and only by heating by itself.

Finally, soup is GREAT idea. -- Hkmaly (talk) 18:49, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, why is soup in the middle? Psychoticpotato (talk) 20:45, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Did some grammar editing. Nothing too drastic, just fixing some too-lengthy phrases and misspelled words. Psychoticpotato (talk) 20:59, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Extension cords with prongs at both ends are actually a even worse than what's currently on this wiki. There's a list of other issues here, which I'm not sure how well I can sum up within a reasonable amount of space. Stuff like feeding power back into the electrical grid putting electricians working on the grid at risk, or dealing with the exhaust from the household generators the cables usually come with. There's all sorts of reasons why major stores refused to manufacture or sell these, but for some reason they've become shockingly common. NickNackGus (talk) 02:09, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

"...they've become shockingly common." Good pun. OR That would have been a good pun, had it been intended. 172.70.160.166 10:50, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

No Pun Intended (does that hotlink?) Edit: cool, it does. Psychoticpotato (talk) 12:37, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Photochromic lenses are also bad for night vision: “...the optical transmission of the lenses was no more than 80% efficient and, taking into account all of the other known factors, was probably less at the time of the accident. This compares to 94.7% and 99.4% optical transmittance of ordinary uncoated and coated lenses, respectively.” – At least that was the conclusion of UK's Marine Accident Investigation Branch for a particular set of glasses worn by the bridge lookout. 162.158.95.9 12:52, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

You cannot get a fungal infection from mold. SDSpivey (talk) 13:59, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Project Orion is also the production codename for an upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 sequel. For a moment there I was thinking "Randall really didn't like that game, huh?" 172.70.54.21 16:11, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

most other charts like this have each one labelled with percentages, not with this weird +- thing. I think that would be MUCH better 172.69.64.147 23:14, 8 May 2024 (UTC)Bumpf

When I would have the time, I had been planning to make it "wikitable sortable" (adding a reasonable numeric sort key in cell-meta, at least, which needs the work; and that is hard to do properly before I get back to desktop browsing myself), but not sure if that would be appreciated or not by the original table-compiler/editors. 172.70.160.172 04:29, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

meh... I have preferred the previous version with +/- over percentages. It's (imo) much harder to parse (for a human) now. It also makes implications about the scale of the chart. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 10:02, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

As the "percentages for sorting purposes" editor, above and who then did that, I actually somewhat agree.

• I used percentages just as an output for my positional calculation, really doesn't 'read' well.
• I could have used raw pixel-distances, I suppose. There was also no reason to round to 5% bounds except that it was a choice similar to "how many decimal places to use" that I might otherwise have chosen.
• The editor who took my sort-value percentages and put them in the cell itself could have just removed the sort-value 'meta' to the cell (as it was, they made at least one transcription error, now corrected), and saved "override the sort of this percentage-themed text by this separate percentage value".
  • They maybe should have kept the explicit plus, as well as the minus. Although "X% (good/bad) would have been better.
• They give the midpoint of sometimes tall 'label boxes' and often wide ones, so huge error-bars (noting the ±5%ish ones where they probably are intended as centrally placed), so – though good for background sorting – I don't think they're really explanatory enough.
• If I'd have known they'd be used visually, I'd have rescaled to not have 105%, which is an artefact of the graph, and my choice to use the axial arrow-tips as 'standard' for 100% (because it was pretty consistent, pixels left/right and up/down from the crossing origin).

I could just convert the calculated values back into strings of +s/-s (or 0, neutral), more correct than what was originally there. But I'm wondering if maybe wording as "(Somewhat / / Very / Extremely) (Good / Bad)", plus some term for "Neutral" would be best. Loose and vague terms, but they're probably loosely and vaguely positioned. More for aesthetics than any hard and fast positioning, with no hint that they might (or should) overlap like subsets of 'true data' might. Keeping the sort-data meta-tagged, of course, because the 'proper' sorting is still a useful property (though I may give that the raw pixel offsets I must still have saved somewhere, chuck away the 'artificial' percentages altogether). 141.101.99.74 14:59, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I personally would put "toasted sandwiches" WAY higher, way into the "bad idea" sector. I like SOFT bread, not scratch-my-mouth-up bread, :) But that's a matter of personal taste. Similar with soup, MUCH higher, I find as a liquid it completely fails as food, not satisfying hunger at all. Like if I have enough of it I might run out of room for more liquid, but be just as hungry. I always find it a waste of eating effort. :) And WHY is there an "actual citation needed" on club sandwiches needing diagonal cuts??? That can only be a gag "citation needed"! I've never even had a club sandwich (they seem to always have tomatoes and the blandest looking chicken I've ever seen, and I hate tomatoes), and I'm no chef, and even I know how you plate a club sandwich! Where would anyone even FIND a citation for this? It's just a part of how to make them! And funny, only other place I heard of "fecal transplant" was when I Googled an issue I was diagnosed with and found that was an actual treatment if my issue was way more severe! Sounded creepy, harvesting shit from one person then having a stranger's shit put inside me, LOL! But that was a virus going around the hospital where I was staying, nothing about bad eating habits. NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:31, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

I removed the club sandwich from that part of the table. The "actual citation needed" was for the "required as it's needed because" part. A club sandwich is a club sandwich regardless of how it's cut. Note that "soup" also includes stews, which can be really filling. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 10:11, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

WRT Solar cars, There is also a power density problem. Solar radiation is about 1000 W/sq-meter, and "good" solar cells are about 20% efficient. That means that a typical car at about 4m*2m, covered with solar cells, would develop a maximum of about 1600W of power. Electric cars average about 320Wh per mile, so sitting 6H in full (ideal) sun would allow you to drive about 30 miles. (A typical home charger is about 7200W) 06:32, 11 May 2024

On Diverging Diamond Interchanges, I read a paper recently comparing the crash cost statistics of DDIs against roundabouts. The latter was identified to be better by 41%, showing roundabouts are more economical and suggesting that they are a safer junction type. This may be why DDIs are only + and not ++. I can't find the article as I'm on my phone right now, but hopefully I've included enough detail that someone with access to a Research Account can find and include if deemed appropriate. 172.71.178.94 18:16, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Other than the obvious shock hazard, double-plug cords also give the ability to plug into two outlets that are not on the same phase/leg of the power supply (in North American 240V split-phase supply or any location supplied with 3-phase power), causing a short from phase to phase.172.70.80.77 15:52, 17 May 2024 (UTC)