View Full Version : Design a Torture Device...



CuatrodeMayo
02-10-2008, 04:42 PM
UK architectural students uneasy over assignment to build torture contraptions

UK architectural students uneasy over assignment to build torture contraptions - Yahoo! Canada News (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080202/koddities/oddity_torture_assignment)



By The Associated Press

LONDON - Homework is not meant to be comfortable.


But one British professor's efforts to get his students to create fully operational torture devices has even some of his colleagues wincing.


Students at Kent University School of Architecture in southeast England were asked to manufacture the devices as part of an attempt to sensitize them to the principals of ergonomics - the science of reducing fatigue and discomfort.


A copy of the assignment - entitled "Torture" - was carried on the website of The Architect's Journal.


The journal said the assignment was written by Kent University tutor Mike Richards.


No one at the university or the Royal Institute of British Architects immediately responded to phone and e-mail messages seeking comment Saturday. But The Guardian newspaper quoted one of the institute's former presidents, Paul Hyatt, as saying he was appalled.


The copy of the assignment on the website showed a diagram of a Gestapo electric torture table and invited students to "look at the dark side of ergonomics."


"Proposals have to be realizable in 2008.... No Sci-Fi devices please," the assignment said. "It has to be fit for purpose, robust and effective and well thought out; it has to work."


The assignment suggested using recycled material. It also warned against careless use of electricity.


"We don't want you to become a victim of your own device," it said.


For more information and news articles, Google "Mike Richards Torture Device"

Oh GAWD the Smell!
02-10-2008, 05:08 PM
Threaten me with a slow trip feet first into a wood chipper, and I'll squeal like a pig.

u50254082
02-10-2008, 06:06 PM
I think the assignment in itself is worthwhile and interesting; it just came up at a rather inappropriate time in political history.

I think the ultimate torture device would be a simulator where you are stuck behind a slow driver and you are late for an interview for your dream job. You can't pass, theres nobody in front of the slow driver, and there is only one road to the destination.

:)

windowphobe
02-11-2008, 05:38 PM
You want to torture someone, make him navigate the Belle Isle Bridge during an ice storm.

RoboNerd
03-21-2008, 10:31 AM
http://www.recordstore.co.uk/images/covers/HIT/HIT41115-300.jpg

Set on auto-repeat...

mheaton76
03-21-2008, 10:46 AM
Don't tell the Bush Administration....We don't want them to get any more ideas.




www.unitedstatesofmichael.com

RoboNerd
03-21-2008, 10:58 AM
Don't tell the Bush Administration....We don't want them to get any more ideas.

Now now, His Fraudulency says that we don't torture. Are you telling me that you don't take him at his word?

mheaton76
03-21-2008, 11:17 AM
His Fraudulency...LMAO!




www.unitedstatesofmichael.com