Made By Monkeys

Thanks to Graham R. for this one, and his experience with the retaining screw on his Bosch jigsaw.

He writes:

The cutting angle on my Bosch jigsaw can be changed by loosening a screw, moving the shoe round, and retightening. This will be done more than once-in-a-lifetime, maybe more than once in a day, and of course the shoe has to be solidly fixed. The retaining screw has a fairly chunky head, and from the outside looks as if it will take the necessary amount of welly. After you've stripped the thread on the third or fourth time of use, however, you look inside and find that it has (had!) a 0.5mm thread more suited to a clock than a power tool (see pic left).

In the UK, objections to wind farms are often made on the grounds of "aestheticism", the twisting blades spoiling otherwise perfect countryside views. Hmmm. IMHO this is just NIMBY-ism in another guise...

However, wind turbines can be far from perfect, as this video darkly and dramatically demonstrates.

Thanks to the website GroovyGreen.com for this one: Exploding Wind Turbine Is Worthy Of Slow Motion Replay

The website writes:

"We're thinking that wind turbine manufacturers are less than thrilled with the above video circulating online. Apparently, this all went down in Denmark when a safety breaking system failed in strong winds. Reports say that two engineers were working on top of the turbine to repair the breaking system, but managed to get down before all hell broke loose. A 19 meter piece of the blade was thrown 20 metres away. Smaller pieces were sent more than 500 meters away."

Click on the image to see detailed view of the failed zinc casting.

Rolling luggage has to be one of the greatest engineering innovations of all time, so it's a real pity that their telescoping handles are so frequently a dismal failure. On a recent trip (to India, natch) the cheaply-cast zinc parts in the handle assembly on my husband's High Sierra brand bag (above) decided to give up the ghost. First he had difficulty getting the handle to extend, which seemed like the worst luck in the world-- until he couldn't get the handle to retract again.

You try checking a 22-inch bag with an 18-inch handle sticking out of it. Talk about needing a chill pill!