Posts by TRT

This one has a lager capacity.

Linings. Tunnel, pocket, anything really.

Re: Swiss efficiency

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb6Not_p8oc

Berlin Airport? I didn't recall, but these guys ^^^^ helpfully summarise the details by way of a song and a Playmobil reconstruction.

Re: Seconds From Disaster

I prefer this.

Re: You should go and have

Holy crap! That is freakin' bizzare. What's all the Dr Who furry caterpillar acrobatics about? Did they dig something out that had been trapped for 14 million years? When they come to open the (*spit*) Elizabeth Line, I hope it's a much more English affair. Sadiq Khan with a tartan thermos of tea, looking at his watch every now and again, reading the Metro until the train pulls in to the platform and he gets up and says "Ay. S'all-reet that is. It'll do, I reckon."

Re: Protestant

Standing in the vast mouth of the tunnel, overcome with awe, the Imam says to the others, "Alhamdulillah! The inside of a mountain is indeed a holy place. This reminds me, it was in a cave in a mountain where Allah revealed the holy Qu'ran to The Prophet, peace be upon him."

The Catholic priest says "Hail Mary, mother of God! Mountains are magical, mystical places. This tunnel reminds me that it was in a hole in a mountain, surrounded by rock, where Our Lord Jesus Christ's body lay for three days before he was resurrected."

The Pastor says "Quite, quite. Praise God, rock of ages. Since time immemorial a place of safety. I am reminded that The Old Testament tells us it was in caves in the mountains that the people of Israel hid from persecution by the Midianites."

Nodding sagely in religious contemplation the three await the Rabbi's comment. After a few moments of silence, they realise the Rabbi isn't with them any more. Looking around, they see him running down the tunnel, robes billowing out behind him. "Hey!" they cry out after him. "Where are you going?"

"Hallelujah! I saw the sign pointing towards Switzerland and it reminded me of where the Nazi's hid my family's gold!"

Re: Guidelines? m'EH?

I've been keeping a gallery of shit BBC news articles published online. I've almost filled my iCloud storage plan allowance. Shockingly bad.

@Geoffrey. You got me.

But it is important, capitalisation. For instance HOOVER is valid in Scrabble but not Words With Friends and INTERNET is not valid in SCRABBLE but is in Words With Friends. You can check that out if you want - I'm telling the truth this time.

Re: facebook is now genericized

What! About! You Tube?! And! Yahoo!?

Hm. I googled (Googled?) bbc. Produced very different results to BBC.

Re: ex-Boss who was himself resolved within 48 hours

re-solved with a strong re-solvent.

Re: travel

Pining for the fjords?!

Visiting Slartibartfast's signature?

Re: What am I voting?

I'm voting Leave, but I'm hoping the result will be Stay by the tiniest of margins.

Why? Because I believe in Europe as an entity and an identity, but it has huge problems. I wouldn't want to leave, but I'd like to rock the boat hard enough that the rest of the occupiers stop arguing about whether to call the stuff filling the bilge "water", "wasser" or "l'eau" and actually acknowledge that something needs to be done quickly about stopping us sinking and why the hell did we rip out all the watertight compartment bulkheads in the first place?

Standardisation: This is useful, though many of them are International Standards (ISO), nothing really to do with the EU other than either being ratified by the EU or competing with an EU standard. For some reason e.g. the consumer tech industry seems to negotiate new standards quite alright on its own, TYVM. Usually on a development cycle which sees obsolescence of "standards" around the time that nations are ready to adopt them - call it evolution if you will.

Emergency Coverage: As a humanitarian, I think that it's our duty as a citizen of the world to offer money, skills, equipment, time etc to relieve suffering caused by environmental or even man made disaster.

Socialism: I prefer the term "capital socialist". Where the profit of enterprise is shared amongst those who contributed to that profit. The means of production is owned by the producer. That's equality of return to the contributor, by coin, labour, thought or deed; not being content with the sweepings from the venture capitalist's table who only put up the money.

Travel: For visiting other countries, it's useful, but no great hardship to get the appropriate visa or permit. It's not like travelling hundreds of miles is such a daily event that it becomes burdensome to incorporate permissions in your travel planning.

Defence: Meh. What do I know? We need an armed force to represent our interests globally, either in humanitarian relief, policing / surveillance or just generally because. It will still happen, be it in tandem with EU forces, NATO forces, USA forces etc etc

Rights: Would have happened anyway; its called social evolution. We need to keep an eye on abuses by bosses of all kinds, but there's enough local / national variation within the EU anyway.

Trade: This is a big one. I was watching that thing about a hovercraft factory unable to trade with Brazil because of a lack of trade agreements which could reduce the tariff to be competitive. We need to sort shit like this out, as well as avoiding the quagmire of TTIP.

Law: That an EU court can override a UK court is both a blessing and a curse. Having higher courts, of course, just drags out the legal process by way of providing endless avenues of appeal. "You've had your day in court" seems like it's become "You've had your day in court, same time next week?"

Migration & Citizenship: This is the big one for me. Having no control over the rate of growth of your population makes it impossible to plan for societal needs. We've already seen 300k pa incoming, a 200k pa housebuilding target and a 170k pa realisation of new homes. This leads to artificially high demand in the housing market, driving prices up, whilst the same cause drives the bulk of wages down, but the executive pay goes up because houses are so expensive nowadays. Human life is cheap, so they say. Then there's the imbalance between an EU citizen's rights to live and work wherever compared to commonwealth citizens who have to jump through hoops to get a visa. As I've said before elsewhere, my girlfriend came here from Nigeria to study law. She needed £20k in the bank and a firm offer from a university to come here, but is only allowed to legally work 20 hours a week to support her living expenses. Yet there's a student sat outside this room right now who has come from Estonia to study biochemistry, needed no funds in the bank, could get a UK student loan, can do paid work of 40+ hours a week and basically only came here because they had a firm offer. What kind of equality is that? I'd like to see EU citizens convicted of serious crimes deported back to their home country and denied the right of re-entry, the same as can be done for other nationalities. Cameron says that it's Britain's strong economy that is a draw for EU migration, but (1) it's only relatively strong compared to eastern and southern european states, we're not exhibiting massive, independent growth and (2) what made them think that free movement of peoples when there are social and economic gradients within the EU would not be a problem? If there are parts of Europe that aren't doing so well even with membership of the EU, what kind of a club is that to be in? There's no relegation zone in the EU. Mind you, there's no promotion zone either. Why can Britain do better economically if other EU countries can't? It can't be down to EU membership - plain and simple. Surely some nations must be suffering if a lot of their mobile workforce can come here to find jobs? They'd rather pick fruit in the UK for £6 an hour than work as whatever in their own country?

In brief, if the EU mechanisms were made more cost-efficient, if the legislative powers were tempered and more directed, if entry visas (and thus access to social/welfare support) were reintroduced across the EU and quotas could be enforced, then I think there's no argument left for the leave camp. I don't think there's a country in the EU that ISN'T suffering from these issues. Some just don't wish to tackle the elephants in the room, but until that happens nationalist parties will find a route to power, and THAT'S the risk of war in Europe. More risk of war if we remain and fail to address the concerns of the people. That's why I hope we don't actually exit, but we send a clear message that even us easy going British types have strong concerns. We don't want to be the economic lifeboat of Europe; we don't have the space!

I've seen that a dozen times now, on all different makes and models.

Re: I don't much care...

Is that what people think green belt is? Gated communities in the Home Counties? In my neck of the woods, they'll bulldoze roads across playing fields, concrete over allotments, cut wildlife corridors in half, backfill natural pools and generally nibble away at the only farmland left in London. Slice after slice of pasture being built over until Harrow merges into Wembley, Watford merges into Harrow, Rickmansworth merges into Watford... Whereas our local gated community, Moor Park, has remained pretty much exactly as it is. They've enough money to buy the fields and leave them as they are, thank you very much, whilst 400 home megaplex's spring up next to the 1 in 100 flood plain, that floods every 5 years now because of land recovery and flood defences built 15 miles upstream so that another 1000 home megaplex could be built there... and so on and so on until you can walk to work balcony to balcony on floor 15.

Re: I don't much care...

...you may want to stop electing politicians...

OK, so what are the alternatives?

Re: Inbred obedience?

I have a shiny EU kettle. If I put it on to boil now, I might just get a cup of tea before I need to get out to go to the polling station in 23 days.

Re: Dance Monkey Dance!

What's the remain camp's plan B for when it doesn't work out then? Hold a referendum on EU membership?

Re: Short-term protection

Don't tell the advertisers that. They think the latest issue of Nature sits handsomely in every fashionable reading room in every university.

Re: Principally, yes...

Then again, do you really want Daily Mail journos interpreting raw data from, say, a study on the link between cancer and mass immigration? They wouldn't understand the phrase "not statistically significant" if you bludgeoned them into unconsciousness with a hard-backed copy of Greene and d'Oliveira.

Re: Short-term protection

Also... more metrics bullshit? Really? That's a good thing?

I quite like the gatekeeper approach, for that you need funds, for that you need subscriptions. On top of that, there are still printed journals and this requires a lot of money to achieve. Agreed the current model is too expensive, but the possible deviousness of publishing houses... I hate to think what they'll come up with.

Re: The closes explination I've seen is...

They accounted for pulse-width by using radio frequency exposure detectors in the cages and compensating for mass of tissue in the cage. Thus for an adult female in gestation, the radio power would be ramped up to maintain the SAR. The dam is removed on day 21 post natum, up to 6 tiny rats are housed together for a further 14 days, then housed separately. The radio frequency generator would have to be turned down when the dam is removed and again when they are housed individually.