The Mismatched 'MythBusters' 473
biohack writes "Most fans of the MythBusters would agree that the two hosts of the show, Adam and Jamie, are 'diametrically opposed in every aspect of their lives'. The Christian Science Monitor story about the MythBusters explores the connection between the backgrounds of the hosts (who knew that Jamie had a degree in Russian literature?) and their creative differences on and off camera." From the article: "It took Hyneman a of couple years to feel comfortable talking in front of a camera, let alone to strangers on the street. 'You have to remember that I'm a guy who is happiest in a dark room just thinking,' he says. 'I'm not a sociable person. I don't like to talk.' Savage, on the other hand, is outgoing. They're clearly the Oscar and Felix of myth busting ... 'Jamie is all about total, complete, and utter control. Thinking first and then acting. Adam is about acting first and then thinking.'"
Re:Does it make anyone else feel a little dirty? (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science_Mo
Re:Beard as personal wall (Score:4, Informative)
Cryptonomicon - Charlene vs. Randy
Re:Does it make anyone else feel a little dirty? (Score:1, Informative)
Despite its name, the Monitor was not established to be a religious-themed paper, nor does it directly promote the doctrine of its patron church. However, at its founder Eddy's request, a daily religious article has appeared in every issue of the Monitor. Eddy also required the inclusion of "Christian Science" in the paper's name, over initial opposition by some of her advisors who thought the religious reference might repel a secular audience.
As to your second point, Webster's dictionary has a very interesting definition of science:
1 : the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
We could easily include any metaphysical musings about faith healing. So for all of the crap, you didn't get much eh?
Kari, not Keri. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Science plus entertainment (Score:1, Informative)
Adam, the idiot protagonist, had a better design because his exploit involved an unavoidable property of ventilation.
False. Fiberglass duct board is the obvious exception (not metallic - save a nearly paper thin, foil-like liner - and not smooth) - it would have foiled both mythbusters. Also metal duct is sometimes lined with fiberglass on the inside. This increases thermal efficiency and reduces the transmission of noise. The "smoothness" is a property of metal and not a necessary property of an air duct. As a PhD engineer who knows fluid dynamics, I doubt the smoothness has a substantial positive affect compared to benefits gained from insulated duct. It certainly is not a required feature just as water still flows in rust-crudded pipe.
Why is this on slashdot anyway?
So idiots can learn a thing or two.
M5 Industries (Score:4, Informative)
And in case you were wondering they do not give tours or accept job applications.
Adam also has his own personal website: http://www.adamsavage.com/ [adamsavage.com]
Can anyone see these two hanging out after work? I don't think they get along very well. Adam is constantly making fun of the moustache, and Jamie obviously gets frustrated with Adam's antics.
Re:Adam & Jamie - Friendship? (Score:5, Informative)
methane
patent
from an Aussie dictionary. The narrator's an Aussie, using an American accent. It's not mispronunciation, it's just not the American pronunciation of those words. Patent and Methane with short vowel sounds would be considered mispronunciations here. It's an *Aussie* show, with American hosts and locations.
Re:Adam & Jamie - Friendship? (Score:5, Informative)
That is how we say it in Australia, and it's how it's said in England, where the word comes from http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=patent&x
I happy that you at least get one example of hearing a word pronounced in a way that you don't like, we get FAR more US media here than you get Australian/English media, and we cringe A LOT!
Kari Byron (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Science plus entertainment (Score:3, Informative)
I doubt the smoothness has a substantial positive affect compared to benefits gained from insulated duct
Yes, you are 100% correct. I'm sure designing air ducts is similar to designing wind tunnels (which I did back in college). It doesn't matter if the wall surface is smooth or not (within reason). The air is going to slow down when close to it regardless of how smooth it is.
Re:Shop work without safety glasses (Score:1, Informative)
Expect to see FAR more safety glasses and hardhats in future episodes.
Re:Beard as personal wall (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and on the Mentos episode- they did check combinations of ingredients, and specifically stated that a combo of the 3 produced the best results.
Re:What about... (Score:2, Informative)
In which case, there's porn of EVERYTHING there.
Re:The show needs someone like Adam (Score:2, Informative)
And they do this VERY well.
Science is thinking AND just plain trying stupid things. I know a lot of scientists, and thinking things through is just half the work. The worst scientists are those that always think their way out of experiments.
Also, if your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a different experiment (Rutherford). Antibiotics worked wonders. No statistics needed. The tree-trunk cannon just worked, but was dangerous. The plywood parachute didn't work, period. No need to do statistics on the type of wood.
From the show any 10 year old will understand that some things just plain work (tree-trunk cannon, table-tennis ball lifting of ships), just never work (using a plywood parachute), or just might have worked, sort of (building a rocket with laughing gass).
But the most valuable lesson for my kid is the "don't try this at home lesson":
If things could in any way go wrong, or burn, or explode, keep a healthy distance.
And it just may save my adventurous kid some very expensive lessons later on.
Re:Adam & Jamie - Friendship? (Score:4, Informative)
oh.. here's some more [wikipedia.org]..
you see where it says Media companies of Australia [wikipedia.org]?
I think it's pretty obvious, btw, that Adam and Jamie are not always the best of friends. They constantly bicker when things are not going well, and there have been times when their underlying tension has put them in dangerous situations... e.g Jamie driving one of their remote controlled cars just that little bit too fast, with Adam stuck in the back. I'm sure it's all in good fun, until they blow themselves up.
Imagine working for Jamie? (Score:3, Informative)
Lots more info on the crew and their history can be found here [discovery.com].
Re:What about... (Score:1, Informative)
Tada...
Its not here, but looks just like her.
Re:Degree in Russian literature (Score:3, Informative)
Also a filtered vodka like that will taste neutral, not really good. Most of the premium vodkas are made such as to have some flavour to them, what flavour differes from vodka to vodka. I've found that if you want a real falvourless one, try Finlandia. It's not cheap stuff, but not premium stuff either. It really doesn't seem to have any taste at all.
For most things (Score:5, Informative)
You'll notice when there's a larger hazard they either put it behind a shield or don more protective gear. However for normal things like soldering or machining, standard glasses are fine.
Also you have to understand that OSHA regs are to protect employees from employers primarily. It's to make sure your employer can't force you to work in unsafe conditions without proper gear. They don't mandate you follow them yourself if you are self employed (which Jamie is). The reason they force OSHA stuff on us isn't because they are worried the cops will come and arrest us for not following it, but because they worried we'd get hurt and sue them and/or they'd get fined.
She's so overrated. (Score:2, Informative)
But if you notice, she never really does much of anything. Boooring.
Now Scotty, she's the hottie. She can weld, wrench, machine, and I betcha she can ride a bike. She has more ink than Kari to boot.
That's a real woman.
Well you have to understand (Score:5, Informative)
That's one of the reasons that Adam seems to be 2nd place to Jamie for a lot of the things they do is it's not his specialty. Heck, that's why they shoot the show at M5. This is the kind of stuff they do anyhow. A company approaches them and says "We want something that can do this," for example a vending machine that can attack people. They then set about scavenging that together and making it work. Mythbusters is just about applying those skills to a myth, and doing it on a more limited budget.
I personally think it's not a bad combo both personality wise and skill wise. Jamie on his own would probably make for a real boring show (he apparently had them get Adam on board for that reason) but you need someone who's got applied problem solving skills like that to make it happen. Also in addition to making the show more fun, Adam does do really well when they need some kind of setup designed and constructed.
Re:What about... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm pretty sure they used to have even more pics though
Re:The show needs someone like Adam (Score:2, Informative)
Now that's a myth that really needs to be put to the test and busted in Mythbusters (as it already has in the studies that's been made on the subject).
Re:Beard as personal wall (Score:2, Informative)
That wasn't a small defect, it was the whole bloody cargo door! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Fligh t_811 [wikipedia.org].
Re:Adam & Jamie - Friendship? (Score:5, Informative)
Where the word comes from?!?! Words don't come from places, they come from people. There is no geographic affinity to a word any more than you would expect a child to genetically diverge from his parent merely because he moves away.
This is one of my pet peeves when discussions of "proper" English come up. The British isles do not have some kind of magic authority because of being the place where English evolved from some old Germanic dialects with a heavy influence from the Normans. That's as absurd as saying people in Africa are closer to 'original' humans because humans evolved there. Only it's more so since languages tend to change more *slowly* in colonies and such.
Wait, I have a better example for people on Slashdot: A software engineering team at company A develops a large complex system. They split, with half the team going to a start-up, company B, taking a copy of the system (let's say it's open source, so no license issues) with them. 30 years later all the people from the original team have retired and handed over their work to their respective replacements. Both companies have developed their respective copies of the system further and continue to do so though the original developers are long gone. Is the version maintained at Company A the more "correct" version merely by virtue of Company A being "where it came from"?
Specifically, in the case of English, the dialects spoken on the British isles have been very heavily influenced by the mainland European languages, which has led to e.g. the soft "r" at the end of syllables in most British dialects (Irish English is one exception). The "r" used in most American dialects (Boston being a famous exception), is actually closer to "original English", and is the way Shakespeare probably pronounced it.
That doesn't mean that one is more correct than the other since there are also examples which go the other way, it just shows how absurd it is to treat natural languages as if they had a pedigree, or as if they were the implementation of an ISO standard.
-chris
P.S. Oh, and the word 'Patent' doesn't come from England, it comes from Rome, so we should actually ask a Roman how to pronounce it, right?
Re:The show needs someone like Adam (Score:2, Informative)
Summary: http://www.athomeinamerica.com/Article_4YearStudy
Re:Adam & Jamie - Friendship? (Score:3, Informative)
They do that in the UK as well. It's actually a better show that way; it loses some on the US-style "shazzam!!!" that is popular and replaces it with a more BBC-like mellow presentation. It comes off quite well; I grabbed the U.S. season one off bittorrent a while ago and while most of the content is good, I just couldn't stand the presentation. Edit it around a bit and add a more adult naration and it actually turns into a show I'd regularly watch.
Re:bust nothing (Score:3, Informative)
People who say there's nothing good on TV don't watch TV.