1645 Underlined.

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Those of you with keen memories may recognize the beanbags from much earlier in the comic. Not sure if that’s the first time they were featured, but I’ve always drawn them as the main furnishings of Jess and Edward’s apartment. I actually had a beanbag like the yellow one at one point. If memory serves a girl I was dating was going to throw it out and I took it because it was still good. No idea what happened to it, but I know that my friend Chris fell asleep on it a bunch of times. While my cat, which he was allergic to, climbed up and sat on him. So he would go home with a runny nose and watery eyes. In spite of this he loved that cat.

I finally got my flat tire sorted out the other day. It was something like $150 for the thing. Got me to thinking that you never really hear about any particular advances in tire technology. It seem to me that in the 40 years that I’ve been alive tires are essentially unchanged. I wonder if that’s by design. I mean you’d lose a lot of money if tires never went flat and lasted a lifetime, right? On the one hand, if that’s the case, I understand the economics. If you make it so tires last forever lots of jobs are lost.

When I was a kid we had a big freezer that was near 100 years old. It was so well made it got passed down trough the family. The company that made it didn’t exist by the time we got it because they made them so well they stopped being able to sell the things. Isn’t that a shame? Quality craftsmanship ruined them. I remember looking up the company when I was in High school but I no longer remember the name.

45 Comments

How short is Ed again, is he 5’2″ or something?

he’s 3’11” and 1/8th.

Good Grief! That means he’s about as tall as “Charby the Vampirate”!
I like Ed even more, now! : )

For the record I don’t actually know how tall ed is. Nina is 6 1 so you can make a guess from that.

I don’t want to start a debate about the heights of characters, but- looking at comic #1641, Ed, compared to Nina, looks to be something like, 5 feet tall.
My only reference is that I have a friend who is about 5 feet-even, and she is very sensitive about being that height. *shrugs*

Im 6’1″ and my GF is 4’11”

the height difference looks really close to Ed and Nina’s

I’m short. Not Ripley’s Believe it or Not short, but short. Friend of mine has a mechanic working for him that makes me look tall. He drives a 1 ton crew cab 460 Ford 4×4. Not saying he’s compensating for anything, but I only drive a 3/4 ton extended cab 350 chevy 4×4.(and a Toyota)

Using the past 300 strips here are the heights
that I was able to work out. Strip number follows each
name where strong comparisons could be made.

6′-2″ = J Thomas Blackwell 1620, 1633
5′-2″ = Edward Lincoln 1536, 1585, 1395
5′-3″ = Carol Graves 1613, 1620
6′-1″ = Nina Grace 1581, 1613, 1620, 1395
5′-11″ = John Kepler 1494, 1453
5′-0″ = Jolene Brooksie Brooks 1502, 1620, 1633, 1494
5′-10″ = Miguel Mike Hernandez 1585, 1453
5′-6″ = Reginald Reggie Watson Booth 1581, 1594, 1613
6′-1″ = Wesley Asel 1594
5′-9″ = Jessica Lincoln 1502, 1536, 1633, 1494, 1395

5′-5″ = Maddison (Reggie’s GF) 1581, 1594, 1613
5′-9″ = Vicky 1390
5′-1″ = Evrina 1353, 1356
5′-1″ = Patricia 1570
5′-7″ = Carol’s Mom 1508
5′-6″ = Robin Graves (Carol’s Sister) 1508
5′-8″ = Dusty Graves (Carol’s Sister) 1508

Note: 1591 implies Thomas is shorter than Nina.
This is due to Nina have more height in her torso.
They were sitting on the floor at the time.

Note: 1398 implies Jessica is close to Nina’s height.
However based on her brother, Jess is shorter by
several inches. See 1395 for all three.

A lot of good work here. But 1056 establishes that Ed is shorter than Brooksie.

Ed: “I mean, you’re the shortest girl here and you’re taller than me”.

Brooksie: “We’re the same size. Almost.”

Ed: “I’m wearing lifts….”

So of the core group that makes Ed shortest by canon.

(I’d just finished an archive reread so remembered this one)

Thanks for finding that dialog even further back than I went. Interestingly the art does not follow this conversation. But if Ed says he is shorter then he may be, however Brooksie may have been also height boosting shoes. I will say that as their shoes appear to be similar in nature (given the few times they have been shown) it is possible that Ed was only stating from his point of view. My review was from the way they are drawn. Due to hairstyle the top of Ed’s head is rather easy to establish. Brooksie is a bit more of an estimate. They are close to the same size and height given the art. Also – there are scenes where it would be VERY odd for him to be in shoes and he is comparable to other characters. Thus his height has to be just at or slightly above that of Brooksie… unless the art is just off by that much. But again, cool stuff to review.

“Well believe me, Mike! I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid . . .and . . . I went ahead anyway.”

Their have been plenty of advancements in tire technology. Mostly in thread patterns and types of rubber that preform differently in different climates and weather.

As for wearing out over time, that’s just life, invincible tires would be hell on the roads.

I’ve occasionally thought that solid tires would be an interesting experiment–usually while hunched over changing a flattened hollow one in the pouring rain. I also realize why they wouldn’t be a good idea–much heavier means reduced gas mileage, and tread wear would still be a thing so they’d still have to be replaced on a regular basis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wAvxQfusWU

Carts used to have wooden wheels with iron rims, but they make for a very bumpy ride and bad contact with the road surface. A tire’s ability to flatten out at the bottom increases the contact patch and makes for more controlled driving. The only vehicles using solid wheels today that I know of are rail-based.

First generation vehicles had solid tires, lousy traction and a bumpy ride. The invention of the pneumatic tire changed all that and vehicles went from industrial to consumer level drivability. This latter evolved to the modern tubeless tire that we know of today.

There have been some attempts at solid tires, usually as emergency spares, but also primary tires. They are usually some type of honeycomb design with a solid outer ring. Haven’t caught one, except in the construction industry, solid tires on skid steer loaders, small front end loaders, rubber tired hoes, etc. do exist.

I’ll just add that most forklifts use solid rubber tires. They last a long time with little or no maintenance and they can support more weight. (Forklifts tend to be amazingly heavy for their size, even before you add a load.) On the downside, they make for a pretty harsh ride, but for an industrial vehicle that’s considered an acceptable tradeoff.

Solid tires also would have a very hard ride. There’s a reason all road vehicles have used pneumatic tires for more than a century.

Tires do improve over time. In my youth (’70s-’80s), I bought bias-ply retreads. I don’t think anyone retreads passenger car tires anymore, and steel-belted radial-ply tires perform much better.

Everything these days is designed with planned obsolescence in mind. It’s one of the fucked up cornerstones of American society. Y’know that whole “Things aren’t built like they used to be” meme?

It’s true.

There’s a lightbulb made in the 1900s that is still running today in a fire-hall somewhere in the northern mid-west. They used to be rated for as many as 2500 hours or more, before the leaders of the market convened and established a 1000 hour life limit sometime in the early oughts.

There’s a whole documentary concerning planned obsolescence, and the differences between American manufacturing and Soviet manufacturing during the cold war, as well as the tremendous amount of waste that comes from our consumer society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1j0XDGIsUg

Highly recommend you watch it sometime.

You can run any lightbulb forever if you reduce the current. Except then it isn’t as bright. So you need a bigger lightbulb for the same brightness. That then uses more current than the smaller lightbulb at full current. Which means the electricity costs you more for the same amount of light. And at that point, it’s not cost-effective any more.

They standardized on a fixed lifetime for that reason, and to make light bulbs comparable amongst vendors: you can expect two 40W-bulbs to be approximately equally bright, but if you’d allow “long life” bulbs, then you could buy 40W bulbs that were a lot darker.

The topic is outdated, though, since LEDs are both longer-lasting and use much less electricity.

(And rather than keeping the old fridge, it may make sense financially to buy a new one with better insulation.)

LED lamps are also following the same scheme though once the US manufacturing giants got in on the game after sucking the market dry with those horrible compact florescent lamps.

A standard LED element should normally last 80,000 to 100,000 and easily could go 120,000 hours when run at its optimal design specifications. But run them with just a bit more current and inadequate heat dissipation and watch that run time drop way down. Then there is the cost cutting on the actual LED elements, which even if very cheap to make can be made cheaper for even more profit.

My father has a refrigerator in his garage that he bought in 1953. It still works fine. But he doesn’t use it, because it also spins the electric meter at a hellacious rate compared to anything built in the past 30 years. And it probably cost him about two month’s pay at the time.

As others have said here, you can make equipment last forever if you build it tough and inefficient, but the operating costs and waste of power outweigh the advantages.

Same here, except it’s from the mid 80s. It’s in my parents’ garage, and they use it whenever their fancy new fridges break down, which happens with suspicious regularity.

My previous place of employ had a GM chest freezer built in the 50’s that was rebuilt once with one of the new high efficiency compressors and compliant refrigerant. Not unheard of in the industry when a good freezer chest goes for 5 grand to start, a rebuild is very cost effective. When the facility was being closed the service guys fought over who could buy the thing.

My mother had a Coldspot refrigerator from the 1940’s. She held onto it because it belonged to her mother. That thing was build like a tank, as she used to say. It was used up through the early 2000’s when she had to go into assisted living. The insulation material was sawdust, which was not very efficient, so the walls of the thing were thick, so the unit was very heavy, and the interior was very small she only used it for her Coca-Cola and soft drinks). The freezer compartment was only large enough for two ice cube trays. If you wanted a freezer in the 1940’s, you bought a separate unit… if you could afford it, otherwise you did without. The thing is, that fridge wasn’t very efficient and really should have been shutdown long before, but the connection with her mother was more important to her.

If you ever come back + read this, Jinx + anyone else-
[if you don’t like PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE in the things you buy], try looking at the products sold in FRANCE.

If I understand it correctly- France’s Government makes it illegal to sell products that have planned obsolescence built into them.

YMMV.

I’m apprised Addington hasn’t tried to guys the mst3k episode yet

Suprised, someone

Just to my taste- “Apprised Addington” sounds like a cool hero, from something like: James Bond films, or from Harry Potter films.

Surprisingly, the original James Bond was an actual birdwatcher, and Ian Fleming thought that the name was extremely boring.

*Snrrk* That made me laugh out loud. That’s cool! Yeah, I forgot that Ian Fleming borrowed the name, James Bond, form a real-life guy. Hee hee. : )

I don’t think they replace tires because of economics so much (though I’m sure planned obsolescence has some sway in how things are made), I think it’s more the physical properties of the cars, the roads, and the tires themselves.

Asphalt is the best thing to make roads out of for our purposes. Cobblestones degrade too fast, concrete hardens and becomes brittle and leaves dangerous cracks, other stones and mixtures are not pliable enough to withstand weather and temperature changes…

Cars themselves could be changed, but the cheapest and most effective way to transport people right now is just the standard combustion engine attached to a carriage, so they don’t really have a lot they can change in that department.

As for the tires themselves, tied as they are to the first two things, rubber tends to be the cheapest, most reliable, and most available substance to make tires out of. Advances have been made in the ridges, in the sidewalls, in how they are put on or taken off, in how much air pressure is put in… for instance, a stock-car tire is almost completely bald because that allows for better handling on dry roads. But it means that the tire itself is terrible with any kind of water on the track, so you don’t see entirely bald tires sold to people who aren’t racing. Truck tires tend to have very deep grooves to account for sediment and water while maintaining control, though those types of tires don’t grip as much of the road, and thus do no accelerate as well as a totally bald tire.

The changes in tires over the last 20 or so years have mostly been small changes. Changes in materials (small changes in rubber content, metal content, etc), and changes of ridges and sidewalls. Since cars are mass produced, they tend to stay within a certain standard for convenience of manufacture and also safety. So the changes are not going to be obvious, though it’s pretty obvious that the tires of today are far better than the ones of my youth (the 1980s) and before.

How to know you’re getting older….When you’re young, its,”100mph! Cool!” When you’re older it’s,”100mph! Cool!…How good are these tires?….

Tyres have changed in many ways in response to environmental pressures, legislation, and changes in vehicles. You just can’t see it!

Generally tyres nowadays are likely to last less miles than they would twenty years ago due to (among other things) a push towards more fuel efficient products, higher speed vehicles and changes in driving style.

I know more about tyres than I ever thought or planned to.

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