h a l f b a k e r yAssume a hemispherical cow.
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It's always been vexing to me that I can't judge my bank balance the way I would my wallet. Said wallet being extremely light, I have no money and vice versa etc...
Enter, new ATM card, with layer of hygroscopic material, a wireless link to your bank , possibly secured by the the matching vibration
of quantum linked cheese molecules, or just boring old encryption.
When the bank balance goes up motors open vents on the side of the card, exposing the hygroscopic element to the atmospheric moisture, and the card gains weight, proportional to the balance of the account.
Water can be removed by a heating element powered by piezoelectric crystals as the cashpoint card flexes in day to day use.
So, all the user has to do is weight the card in the palm of their hand to know if the salary has gone in, of the gas bill direct debit has taken place.
For pettifogging amounts, say less than 1 million Pounds Sterling, the long stick can amplify the amount of such trifling weight increases or decreases.
Truth Lies Within
http://www.johncoop...=36:poems&Itemid=56
[not_morrison_rm, Apr 26 2012]
The youth of today...
http://answers.goog...hreadview?id=408989
Seems like everyone claims to have heard it from someone else. [UnaBubba, Apr 29 2012]
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You will need to incorporate some lighter than air system to accurately reflect my overdraft. |
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Might work if you do it out of highly unstable rare
earth isotopes and a thick, carbon and lead wallet? |
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A few months ago somebody halfbaked a liquid currency
system. This idea holds even greater appeal by dint of
being _more_ needlessly complicated. |
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>incorporate some lighter than air system |
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I did toy with having some helium in there to provide lift, obviously it'll have to be compressed to save space. |
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Dual-use as we can say "bugger" in a very high-pitched voice to offset the depressing bit of having an overdraught. |
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Wouldn't a negative account balance cause your card to
float up toward the ceiling? |
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the properties of negative mass can be mysterious... |
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That, sir, is an antimatter Visa card. Veddy rare they
are, too. |
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Slightly more mundane is a card that shows colours...in the red
or black or various shades. |
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Sort of gives a new meaning to the legendary AmEx Black
Card... or not, now that I think about it. |
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Oh, alright...
as long as it's irridescent. |
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>That, sir, is an antimatter Visa card. |
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Aha, that explains the high-vacuum magnetic-containment credit card reader in my local Pizza Hut, or not. |
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Hmm, possibly a MIDI player, plays tinny renditions of tunes towards the end of the month. Perhaps Big Yellow Taxi .." you don't know what you've got until it's gone.." |
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Unfortunately this would result in more teenagers wearing their pants around their knees in an effort to communicate their financial status. |
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I'm always tempted to give these "trendy" teenagers
a shove, just to watch them fall over. When I
explained to my son what "jailing" was about, he
pulled his jeans up and stopped flashing his
underpants. Cultural habits are often obscure in
origin. |
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//more teenagers wearing their pants around their knees//
My understanding of that was undermined by the different meaning of one of those words in British and American English, but we'll draw a veil over that one.. |
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So, you think there's a market for false weighted variable weighted cashpoint cards, possibly with depleted uranium? |
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So long as the aforementioned teenagers carry those
cards close to their testes, to lower their likelihood
of procreating. |
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"Metal toe-capped boots, bell bottom trousers 22 inches around the bottom and 15 inches around the knee, ...donkey fringe of hair brushed down in a curl over the foreheads.. in a peak over one eye.. a hat worn on the side of the head to show the hair on the other side done in a quiff"- Peaky Blinder youth fashion 1880's. |
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Anyone waiting for youth fashion to get practical had better be very patient. |
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What the hell is a donkey fringe anyway? |
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The 'donkey fringe" was popular with youths in the
1870s to 1890s, in and around Manchester, England,
where it was part of the gang culture of the day.
That culture spread to other parts of the British
Empire, briefly, around 1900. |
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It involved cutting the hair longer of one side of the
forehead than the other and plastering it down to
the forehead, over the eye, as a sign of gang
affiliation. |
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Hmmm, maybe it would be better to simply carry about very large rocks? Possibly with large holes in the center. Just as we do today, the truly wealthy can have the bulk of the currency and power without every having to worry about losing it and the rest of us can keep trading well polished pebbles. Currency is symbolic, and with all symbolic systems it is somewhat ridiculous. What can a very wealthy person do with their depleted uranium debit card in a real pinch, use it as brass knuckles? |
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Currency is the pheromone of our species, a unifying stench that directs our collaborative efforts in war, in nest building, in the care of our social hierarchy; while stunningly effective as a biological tool, it is also brutally and horribly flawed, empowering deranged individuals to direct the masses of drones to fruitless tasks, enabling parasites and diseases. In the end we are no better than ants in a hive, following the trails left out by others and leaving our own. We trust the money because we have nothing else to trust, even when we can see that it is leading us into danger, even when we can see the ridiculous things that it is making us do. Even when we can see the that the trail is false, a fake, a manipulation, we will follow it. In some ways we are really and truly a sad species. |
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I've copied that and pasted it into my personal archives,
[WcW]. One of the most profound statements I've run
across this month (that's not a sleight, I just read _a lot_). |
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// cutting the hair longer of one side of the forehead than
the other and plastering it down ... over the eye, as a sign
of gang affiliation. // |
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Lack of depth perception was identified as a virtue among
these adolescent gangs, then? |
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I think paragraph two of WcW is the missing paragraph from "Truth Lies Within"...sealink |
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I'm not certain they were possessed of any
worthwhile virtues, [Alter]. |
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>I'm not certain they were possessed of any worthwhile virtues |
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"The world is passing through troubling times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress." |
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Attributed to Peter the Hermit, AD 1100-ish, just after tea-time, along with the steam toaster. Ok, I lied about one of those. |
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There's a similarly scathing, and probably similarly
apocryphal, observation on the shortcomings of
youth attributed to Socrates, as I recall. |
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Hmm, should we ever get to make variable gravity (to those of you reading this in 3000AD sitting there wearing a bacofoil suit and drinking your Space Beer..stop looking so smug and send back the wormhole) |
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Tweak-able gravity would be handy, increasing in an arithmetical progression as I head towards the cashpoint machine on the first of the month.. |
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Would you have to descend upon the ATM in a
Fibonacci spiral, [n_m_r]? |
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