[Stoves] How to conduct research on hardware with a strong social involvement (like stoves)

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin:

Great reminder of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Of note:

"Our data might also be contemplated through the prism of
counterphenomenological resistentialism, which holds that *les choses sont
contre nous* (things are against us).5
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1322240/#ref5> Resistentialism
is the belief that inanimate objects have a natural antipathy towards
humans, and therefore it is not people who control things but* things that
increasingly control people*. Although it seems unreasonable to say that
the teaspoons are exerting any influence over the Burnet Institute's
employees (with the exception of the authors), their demonstrated ability
to migrate and disappear shows that we have little or no control over them."

Sandstorms and volcano eruptions are proof positive that nature kills us,
otherwise we'd never have premature deaths.

That experts' context-free cookstoves show something similar to "high level
of dissatisfaction with the level of service provided by teaspoons in terms
of their availability" is explainable by resistentialism.

The reference to 13 June 1948 NYT article "Thingness of Things", filed by
Paul F. Jennings from Paris, attached. Resistentialism was called by some
"just a transcendental version of modern physics".

Jennings cites Ventre, the pioneer resistentialist to assert "Things cannot
be dominated. Resistentialism is a tragic philosophy. It sees that man is
doomed by Things the moment he attempts to achieve anything outside his own
"mind" which, like Disney's Flying Mouse, is Not A Thing At All."

That is, all your claims about designing a perfect stove is vanity behind a
facade of science. You want to change things. Things will fight back!

All this ISO jugglery is vain attempt to create a Stove for the Minds,
burning expertise into smoke.

The same 13 June 1948 NYT had an advertisement (p. 29) for a portable
electric washer for a Long Island "summer hideout" (away from Manhattan
laundries, I guess) and - get this - a gadget "running hot water from a
cold water faucet"! (p .202). Running on AC of DC. Cost $3.98 postpaid.

I don't know which water boiling test was applied to compute efficiency.

Nikhil

PS: "Things always win, and man can only be free from them by not doing
anything at all."

Or drop the delusion of doing anything, any thing.






------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
*Skype: nikhildesai888*


On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 12:04 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Friends
>
> Teaspoons in the office:
>
> This study was done ethically and reported professionally. I found their
> explanations about where teaspoons ended up a tad speculative.
>
> As is often the case with cooking stoves, there was a high level of
> dissatisfaction with the level of service provided by teaspoons in terms of
> their availability.
>
> "The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the
> displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute"
>
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1322240/
>
> Regards
> Crispin at tea time
>
>
>
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