At this stage of mankind's industrialization, it's disingenuous to look at a human powered machine as an improvement over an electricity powered one.
Electricity is awesome, but until we truly have renewable power in all areas of the world, devices like this are good things.
Never mind that though. Pedalling is a lot easier than washing clothes by hand. It's better for your back too.
I see it's hard to imagine that to you, so try with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Below_Poverty_Line_(India)
400 INR monthly per head is less than 7 USD per head per month to survive.
Your hands will be at least a little damp and soapy. How did that happen, if latex is waterproof? It's because your hand doesn't make a perfect seal with the glove.
Also, dish soap and other detergents are surfactants, which reduce the surface tension of water. That makes it easier for it to get into tight spaces, like the space between the glove's edge and your hand.
Finally, latex is soluble in many kinds of oil/petroleum-containing product (many waxes, some heavy-duty cleaners, etc.), so if you're wearing latex gloves, you'll literally be dissolving latex onto your skin and degrading the gloves. Gross.
If that's what a three-second test will do, imagine how it'd feel to wash clothes for thirty minutes. Not pleasant.
No, it's because your hands generate sweat, which cannot evaporate due to being completely sealed in by the latex.
Here's a test for you: fill a latex glove with water and see if it is leaking any. You will see that it is completely waterproof.
The soap got in through the edge of the glove, not through the glove. Your test won't demonstrate anything other than that latex can hold water, which is not what I was trying to show.
I wasn't kidding when I said to try it. :)
Trust me years ago I worked on on project that was simulating a nuke reactor (the CFR breeder) and had to spend an afternoon wrapping a dummy fuel pin with insulation in full bunny suit, respirator and latex gloves on a very hot day when I took the gloves off there must have been 50 cc's of fluid in the gloves finger tips.
There is a problem with risk assessment in general.
BBC had a few useful programmes. One was about young peoe visiting developing nations to see how luxuries are produced. They visited the Accra toxic electronic equipment dump. People take wiring and burn the insulation off to get the copper. These cable bonfires release huge clouds of toxic smoke. Now one has any kind of mask. The programme showed a boy smashing capacitors off a PCB with a rock to sell them. I think, but do not know, that if je'd had a pair of snips (for the compnent leads) and some way to get the copper / gold off the PCB that he'd have had a more valuable resource to sell. It was a profoundly depressing, distressing, view.
There was another programme called Welcome To India. This showed poor people reclaiming gold. They visited the jewelery district and swept the roads. They used acids and mercury and heat to turn this dust and grit into tiny gold grains. Part of the process was taking aciding grit in the palm of their hand and stirring it with their fingers. Again, no glasses or masks or gloves.
Indian bloggers - are there any good blogs showing everyday life in India? Not just the poverty, but the life of a broad cross section of the population?
Just for reference, the cheapest semi-automatic washing machine I could find online is Rs.3990 or ~$65 [0] (there are cheaper models available offline, usually).
[0] http://compareindia.in.com/specification/washing-machines/ak...
-- sent from a hut on the beach in Goa.Perhaps the solution is NOT to make trivial tasks ever more trivially easy? Perhaps humans need a little resistance training in their daily lives? There is a point where things are too easy and the average american's health is proof of this. This product can improve the lives, not just of those without electricity, but also those with electricity.
There are some benefits to living in a rural Indian village- you get more exercise then I do in my natural habitat. That's not saying that it's healthier to live there or that I would ever voluntarily move there. Obviously, I have more choices, better health and more wealth living in the states. But living in front of a macbook also has downsides- my arteries are clogging as we speak. So I have to offset all my inactivity on my bike or at the gym.
With this washing machine, I can get everything I want and need- clean clothes, lower electricity bills and exercise. And so too can a woman in India get what SHE needs- clean clothes, free time and less toil. But stating the obvious- that Americans needs more exercise and to use less energy- is not even close to advocating for living in a rural Indian village.
Speak for yourself. My natural habitat has great public transit, so I get my exercise built into my commute.
I don't think it's misleading at all.
If electricity and electric cars were available and commonplace in Fred Flintstone's era, and he designed a car that used no electricity, then he could and should be credited for designing a car that "ran without electricity".
Now, if someone said this machine ran without energy, that would me not only misleading, but a lie.
> At this stage of mankind's industrialization, it's disingenuous to look at a human powered machine as an improvement over an electricity powered one.
That's a legitimate point, and one that is worth discussing about.