Mord, you may want to rethink that remark. As it turns out, in NA the major vector and resevoir for the avian flu problems are the wild duck populations. Free-range birds are most at risk to the virus because they have the most contact with the wild populations. Factory birds kept in sanitary conditions (foot washes, sealed-air systems, etc...) have much lower risk of infection. The problem is so great that the Canadian food regulators (CFIA) are considering requiring that all poultry for sale in Canada be raised in "factory" conditions to avoid disease exposure.
I love how this is posted to an emergency preparedness website.
Temperatures of -1 to -2! Horrors! The shorts will have go in the closet! People will wear socks with their sandles!
Sorry. It's the whole gowing-up-in-Edmonton thing. I'm done now.
The theory I've heard with methyl clathrate bubbles (as they're also called), is not so much an explosion risk as a bouyancy hazard.
The thinking goes like this: when a big bubble of methane hits the surface, the density of water drops immensely. Ships are too heavy to float. One end drops down and the ship sinks like a torpedo. It's like the ocean suddenly gives way and the ship sails off a cliff. It would be very quick---a ship would go down in a matter of seconds.
Planes are the same thing: a rising bubble hits the plane and suddenly the wing surfaces can no longer support the plane. The airframe adopts a nose-down configuration, and, in the words of transporation accident review boards everywhere, commences a powered decent into terrain. Since the methane will not support the plane in the air, the pilot has little chance to recover. Splat.
In fact, the bubbles diplace so much oxygen that it's most likely that they extinguish the planes engines, making recovery that much more difficult.
You know, I was thinking the same thing: blah blah strongly held opinions blah blah ego investment blah bla--- hey! That one mighty fine looking sandwitch!
And then I broke for lunch.
If you've ever had any contact with engineering or science the advantages to the metric system are so obvious as to not even be a consideration. Why anyone would want to try to do engineering drawings in inches and feet, spec screws and wire by gauge, shims by the thou, is completely bewyond me.
The major holdouts are the building trades and cooking, which is the major reason Canadians knwo anything about the imperial or US systems (not the same! Especially for cooking!), but even there, metric makes a lot of sense.
Aside from the fact that builders have their own set of measurements for everything (12 penny nails? 16 gauge wire? At least 5 pipe standards?) going from 2x4s to 5x10s wouldn't be a huge change. Rather than cubic yards, we'd order cubic metres of soil.
In cooking it makes even more sense: Imagine you have a recipe for bread wich calls for 3 tablespoons of leavening agent, yeast of baking soda or whatever. How do you cut the recipe in half, to go, for example in a smaller bread machine? Right now, I convert to metric (1T=30mL) , scale and convert back.
Situations like this are why tenure exists: at the top of the alt.locksmithing thread, the original poster is encouraging others to pressure Prof. Blaze's "superiors" to fire him. Aside from a few high-fives in the faculty lounge, I don't imagine a letter campaign will amount to much, especially since he's doing valuable work. It's a nice article.
Good link ian.
Starc: not really. About as appetizing as a housefly.
My uncle, the jungle botanist, has lots of great stories about botflies (and other parasites), but his best is the one about telling a fellow flyer about that strange bump on his arm on the way back to Ottawa, followed, of course, by the rough-and-ready in-flight surgery (back when you could have a razor and tweezers in your luggage).
Panto is almost unheard of in North America, alas.
There. I've fixed that for you, sir. Karen Kain and Ross Petty have been taking pantomimes across the Great White North for at least twenty years. It's only you benighted Americains who don't know the joy of a good cross-dressing pie fight and young ingenues in tights playing the male lead.
As far as I can tell, yes (hey, someone has to be the boring straight guy). These are milling machines for grinding stuff up in the "milling wheat" sense, not part-fabriactor/cutter "milling machine" machine-shop sense.
They're making computer-controlled grinders/reactors, a complicated motar and pestle, perfect small-batch nano-mechanical and fancy materials manufacture. Yes, these would work just fine for low-number, high-precision production like nuclear warheads. The coffee-grinding is a neeto demo. So it's both a (potential) nuke-maker and a coffee mill. More likely, it's for high-quality metal part manufacture, like turbine blades and other high-stress parts.
Anyway, the really hot guys are on the front page.
If you're riding on anything but sand or mud, slicks give better traction than do knobbies. Bikes don't hydroplane, so knobbies actually give you worse traction on road than slicks do.
I also recommend slicks (real slicks, not just semis either), because several of my friends had hand numbness, the first stage of nerve damage, from excessive vibration. Change to slicks, problem solved.
Furthermore, slicks are easier to peddle. Most of the switches say that their bikes are faster and a lot more fun to ride after the change over.
There are several very affordable brands of slicks out there: Avocet, IRC and Specialized all make nice ones. If you're buying a Hardrock, consider asking for Armadillo tires with your bike.
More important than the bike itself is how well it fits you. Get your bike store to do a custom fit---a "Fit Kit" is the most common method. Bikes are so good now that a good fit is way more important than the exact components you buy.
That said, Konas are good bikes and Deore LX is the price/durability sweetspot in the ATB Shimano line. Acera X will wear out in two-three years of constant use. And do get smooth tyres. Chunky rubber is hard to peddle and can damage your carpal nerves.
The so-called differences between men and women, was started by (only!) two people: John Gray, he of the Mars/Venus fame, and Deborah Tannen, "You Just Don't Understand." Certainly, their claims inflamed the popluar imagination very quickly, but both books were based on a miniscue amount of research.
This article popped up on the SciTechDaily site last week on exactly this point. In short, there's a lot less evidence for believing that women and men communicate differently than there is for the idea that we each communicate differently as individuals.
I don't know why this has to be read from a feminist perspective (leaving aside those who think that everything is gendered), one way or another. "Dr." Laura seems to be offering up her usual mixute of obvious and offensive homilies. Certainly, if my mate followed these rules, she'd either be dull, patronizing (shouldn't that be matronizing? But, I digress), or, like "Dr." Laura, both.
...and it's been around for a very long while. I remember reading an earlier version of this back in the mid-nineties on the newsgroup. It's as snarkalicious now as it was then.
Mord, you may want to rethink that remark. As it turns out, in NA the major vector and resevoir for the avian flu problems are the wild duck populations. Free-range birds are most at risk to the virus because they have the most contact with the wild populations. Factory birds kept in sanitary conditions (foot washes, sealed-air systems, etc...) have much lower risk of infection. The problem is so great that the Canadian food regulators (CFIA) are considering requiring that all poultry for sale in Canada be raised in "factory" conditions to avoid disease exposure.
posted by bonehead 18 years ago
In "Forget land, just get yourself a piece of bottom."
But how do the sheep answer their ads? SHEEP CAN'T USE THE INTERNETS! Cows, now cows are smart.
posted by bonehead 19 years ago
In "Snow Falls in Western Australia"
I love how this is posted to an emergency preparedness website. Temperatures of -1 to -2! Horrors! The shorts will have go in the closet! People will wear socks with their sandles! Sorry. It's the whole gowing-up-in-Edmonton thing. I'm done now.
posted by bonehead 19 years ago
In "Bacteria"
The theory I've heard with methyl clathrate bubbles (as they're also called), is not so much an explosion risk as a bouyancy hazard. The thinking goes like this: when a big bubble of methane hits the surface, the density of water drops immensely. Ships are too heavy to float. One end drops down and the ship sinks like a torpedo. It's like the ocean suddenly gives way and the ship sails off a cliff. It would be very quick---a ship would go down in a matter of seconds. Planes are the same thing: a rising bubble hits the plane and suddenly the wing surfaces can no longer support the plane. The airframe adopts a nose-down configuration, and, in the words of transporation accident review boards everywhere, commences a powered decent into terrain. Since the methane will not support the plane in the air, the pilot has little chance to recover. Splat. In fact, the bubbles diplace so much oxygen that it's most likely that they extinguish the planes engines, making recovery that much more difficult.
posted by bonehead 19 years ago
In "Need to prove you're the smarty?"
You know, I was thinking the same thing: blah blah strongly held opinions blah blah ego investment blah bla--- hey! That one mighty fine looking sandwitch! And then I broke for lunch.
posted by bonehead 19 years ago
In "Curious, George: Ottawa Meetup!"
That would be this Pub Italia, I presume. The more monk's the merrier.
posted by bonehead 19 years ago
In "Metric USA"
If you've ever had any contact with engineering or science the advantages to the metric system are so obvious as to not even be a consideration. Why anyone would want to try to do engineering drawings in inches and feet, spec screws and wire by gauge, shims by the thou, is completely bewyond me. The major holdouts are the building trades and cooking, which is the major reason Canadians knwo anything about the imperial or US systems (not the same! Especially for cooking!), but even there, metric makes a lot of sense. Aside from the fact that builders have their own set of measurements for everything (12 penny nails? 16 gauge wire? At least 5 pipe standards?) going from 2x4s to 5x10s wouldn't be a huge change. Rather than cubic yards, we'd order cubic metres of soil. In cooking it makes even more sense: Imagine you have a recipe for bread wich calls for 3 tablespoons of leavening agent, yeast of baking soda or whatever. How do you cut the recipe in half, to go, for example in a smaller bread machine? Right now, I convert to metric (1T=30mL) , scale and convert back.
posted by bonehead 19 years ago
In "Safecracking<br/>"
Situations like this are why tenure exists: at the top of the alt.locksmithing thread, the original poster is encouraging others to pressure Prof. Blaze's "superiors" to fire him. Aside from a few high-fives in the faculty lounge, I don't imagine a letter campaign will amount to much, especially since he's doing valuable work. It's a nice article. Good link ian.
posted by bonehead 19 years ago
In "NSFTS: Not Safe For The Squeamish."
Starc: not really. About as appetizing as a housefly. My uncle, the jungle botanist, has lots of great stories about botflies (and other parasites), but his best is the one about telling a fellow flyer about that strange bump on his arm on the way back to Ottawa, followed, of course, by the rough-and-ready in-flight surgery (back when you could have a razor and tweezers in your luggage).
posted by bonehead 19 years ago
In "Krankie hurt in fall from beanstalk"
Panto is almost unheard of in
NorthAmerica, alas. There. I've fixed that for you, sir. Karen Kain and Ross Petty have been taking pantomimes across the Great White North for at least twenty years. It's only you benighted Americains who don't know the joy of a good cross-dressing pie fight and young ingenues in tights playing the male lead.posted by bonehead 19 years ago
In ""
As far as I can tell, yes (hey, someone has to be the boring straight guy). These are milling machines for grinding stuff up in the "milling wheat" sense, not part-fabriactor/cutter "milling machine" machine-shop sense.
posted by bonehead 19 years ago
They're making computer-controlled grinders/reactors, a complicated motar and pestle, perfect small-batch nano-mechanical and fancy materials manufacture. Yes, these would work just fine for low-number, high-precision production like nuclear warheads. The coffee-grinding is a neeto demo. So it's both a (potential) nuke-maker and a coffee mill. More likely, it's for high-quality metal part manufacture, like turbine blades and other high-stress parts. Anyway, the really hot guys are on the front page.
posted by bonehead 19 years ago
In "Do not jerk off with icy hot!!!"
Old joke: how do can you tell if someone is a chemist in a public bathroom? They're the ones washing their hands before they pee.
posted by bonehead 20 years ago
In "Curious George: Buying A Bike"
If you're riding on anything but sand or mud, slicks give better traction than do knobbies. Bikes don't hydroplane, so knobbies actually give you worse traction on road than slicks do. I also recommend slicks (real slicks, not just semis either), because several of my friends had hand numbness, the first stage of nerve damage, from excessive vibration. Change to slicks, problem solved. Furthermore, slicks are easier to peddle. Most of the switches say that their bikes are faster and a lot more fun to ride after the change over. There are several very affordable brands of slicks out there: Avocet, IRC and Specialized all make nice ones. If you're buying a Hardrock, consider asking for Armadillo tires with your bike.
posted by bonehead 20 years ago
More important than the bike itself is how well it fits you. Get your bike store to do a custom fit---a "Fit Kit" is the most common method. Bikes are so good now that a good fit is way more important than the exact components you buy. That said, Konas are good bikes and Deore LX is the price/durability sweetspot in the ATB Shimano line. Acera X will wear out in two-three years of constant use. And do get smooth tyres. Chunky rubber is hard to peddle and can damage your carpal nerves.
posted by bonehead 20 years ago
In "It's a guy thing."
The so-called differences between men and women, was started by (only!) two people: John Gray, he of the Mars/Venus fame, and Deborah Tannen, "You Just Don't Understand." Certainly, their claims inflamed the popluar imagination very quickly, but both books were based on a miniscue amount of research. This article popped up on the SciTechDaily site last week on exactly this point. In short, there's a lot less evidence for believing that women and men communicate differently than there is for the idea that we each communicate differently as individuals. I don't know why this has to be read from a feminist perspective (leaving aside those who think that everything is gendered), one way or another. "Dr." Laura seems to be offering up her usual mixute of obvious and offensive homilies. Certainly, if my mate followed these rules, she'd either be dull, patronizing (shouldn't that be matronizing? But, I digress), or, like "Dr." Laura, both.
posted by bonehead 20 years ago
In "An A-list you might not want to make."
...and it's been around for a very long while. I remember reading an earlier version of this back in the mid-nineties on the newsgroup. It's as snarkalicious now as it was then.
posted by bonehead 20 years ago
In "Aerorider"
A faired tadpole trike. You'ld be so boned in a heavy crosswind.
posted by bonehead 20 years ago
(limited to the most recent 20 comments)