* Posts by Pompous Git

3087 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2014

El Reg revisits Battle of Agincourt on 600th anniversary

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Re: Part of the issue here is that the French underestimated the tactical effect of combining.....

There are only 5 sources of existing medieval longbows:

The Spencer Bow with a draw weight of 100 lbs

The Mendlesham bow with a draw weight of 80 lbs

The Hedgeley Moor Bow with a draw weight of 50 lbs

The Flodden Bow with a draw weight of 90 lbs

The H.M.S. Mary Rose, a ship in the English fleet that sank off Portsmouth in 1545. There were 167 bows recovered from this ship with a draw weight average of 100 lbs.

You claim your more than twice as powerful bow (220 lb) generates a better estimate of medieval longbowmen effectiveness against armour than the simulation in the flim clip (not "mine" BTW). I say bollocks back at you.

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Re: Part of the issue here is that the French underestimated the tactical effect of combining.....

Penetrate, but not injure at 20 metres:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3997HZuWjk

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Re: Part of the issue here is that the French underestimated the tactical effect of combining.....

As I understand it, the French knights were wearing the latest and greatest in mild steel armour and thus not particularly vulnerable to arrows. Their horses were a different matter. The archers went on a killing spree with knives when the French knights were unhorsed and unable to defend themselves while fallen over on very boggy ground.

American robocallers to be shamed in public lists

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Have an upvote. I'd give you more if I could. On one memorable occasion I received a call at 4 am in the morning here in Tasmania from some dude in the USA. "Why would I purchase anything from a criminal?" I asked. Caller said he wasn't a criminal, just doing his job. I listed his crimes:

1. I'm on a do-not-call list

2. He called on a Sunday

3. He called before 9 am

4. He called on a designated Public Holiday (ANZAC Day)

Caller said Australian laws do not apply to Americans, so I said: "Great. I will tell that to the next American I murder. "One of your fellow citizens told me that Australian Law doesn't protect you!"

Bacon as deadly as cigarettes and asbestos

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Re: Five pages of comments and nobody has said it...

Wealth is disease

And I am the cure

[Dave Bromberg and George Harrison]

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Re: Life leads to cancer. Cancer leads to suffering. Suffering leads to anger.

Stress, cancer and immunity: New developments in biopsychosocial and psychoneuroimmunologic research.

Baltrusch, H. J.; Stangel, W.; Titze, I.

Acta Neurologica, Vol 13(4), Aug 1991, 315-327.

"Outlines the biopsychosocial approach to research on cancer and immunity. Psychosocial stressors have been shown to be risk factors in the clinical manifestation of cancer; such stressors may cause a person to experience helplessness and hopelessness. Evidence of links between psychosocial and behavioral factors and certain cancer sites falls into 2 categories: (1) studies of the relationship between aversive life events and the pathogenesis of cancer and (2) studies of the relationships between certain behaviors and coping styles and the development of cancer. Behavioral oncologists have proposed a "Type C" or cancer prone behavior pattern, characterized by denial of negative emotions, inability to express feelings, and high social conformity and compliance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)"

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Re: Life leads to cancer

It might be easier to stop the greenie-weenies causing cancer. There's a relationship between stress and cancer. Running around claiming that one part in a hundred billion of chemical X causes cancer induces unnecessary stress, thus increasing the rate of cancer among those who can be bothered paying attention to them.

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Nobody in their right mind would attempt to cure meat in a brine made solely from sodium/potassium nitrate; it's too damned expensive. All brining is done with NaCl, most with the addition of something to prevent the degradation of myoglobin at about 0.5% the weight of NaCl. Usually potassium sorbate these days, but used to be potassium nitrate here. WHO documents refer to sodium nitrite.

It occurs to me that if you did cure your meat with potassium nitrate alone then you'd probably not want to leave the ham cooking in the oven too long. It would probably explode.

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Nitrosamine is a known carcinogen that forms in salted meats when the red colour was needed to be preserved using potassium nitrate or sodium nitrite. Grey ham, bacon, corned beef salami etc don't look very appetising. Which is why ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is used these days instead. The amount of ascorbic acid/nitrate/nitrite used is minute; typically 0.5%.

Do not "eat your bacon raw". It needs to be cooked before consumption!

So just what is the third Great Invention of all time?

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Re: Nobody's mentioned credit yet

Nor logic and Aristotle's three Laws of Thought. Without logic there's no chance of rational discourse, computers etc.

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Domestication of other species and farming

Both invented by ants long before humans copied them.

Microsoft offers to PAY YOU to trade in your old computer for a Windows 10 device

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For give-away to good home

Four Win7 licences: 1 Pro 64 bit, 2 * Home Premium 64 bit and 1 Home Premium 32 bit.

Mine's the coat with Mint in pocket...

Wheels come off parents' plan to dub sprog 'Mini Cooper'

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In the UK went to school in Nuneaton where there was an Eric Hunt nicknamed Hairy for obvious reasons. In Hobart, Tasmania worked with one Dryden Heeps, nickname: Shit.

Science Museum celebrates Ada Lovelace

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Re: A bit of pro-women bias

And not to forget her contributions to those important sciences of phrenology and animal magnetism. What she called "poetical-science".

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Re: "Lovelace's potential was perhaps never fully realised...

But not in Australia, sadly. No French cigarettes can be legally sold here.

Terror in the Chernobyl dead zone: Life - of a wild kind - burgeons

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Yes, but they are peace-loving, vegan wolves so they obviously have no effect on the relative proportions of other animals in the CLZ.

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Re: What a meltdown.

Quite a different story at the BBC:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32452085

"Dr Wood's team's project is part of a five-year research programme called Transfer, Exposure, Effects (Tree), which will aim to "reduce uncertainty in estimating the risk to humans and wildlife associated with exposure to radioactivity, and to reduce unnecessary conservatism in risk calculations".

....

"Illegal poaching is a problem within the CEZ, and one image captured by the cameras suggested that the elk in question had a narrow escape.

The wound at the top of this elk's foreleg could be a shot injury caused by a poacher's gun

Dr Wood said that the team had to bear in mind the activity of poachers when they chose the most suitable species to wear the collars.

He explained that if the animal was killed then it would mean that the collected data would be limited or lost.

He added: "However, this is a concern that could be applied to any of the species because poachers going into the zone are unlikely to be overly selective."

Publicity about this research suggests that there is no censensus:

"despite more than 25 years of ongoing research into the radiological consequences for the environment, scientists have failed to come to a consensus on the effects of the Chernobyl disaster on local wildlife. Some claim the Chernobyl exclusion zone (CEZ) has become a thriving wildlife haven in the absence of humans, whereas others have reported significant biological impacts at even tiny radiation doses."

No need for LP to go there it would seem. There would appear to be several hundred people living in the CEZ.

Unless! They! Have! Turned! Into! Zombies!

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Re: RADIATION!

Worth a read:

Radiation Hormesis and the Linear-No-Threshold Assumption, Charles L. Sanders

ISBN: 978-3-642-03719-1 (Print) 978-3-642-03720-7 (Online)

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Re: Chernobyl actual accident profile

"ALL western reactors have a negative void coefficient - if they lose coolant and if you leave it alone it shuts down."

"Magnox reactors, advanced gas-cooled reactors and pebble bed reactors are gas-cooled and so void coefficients are not an issue." I guess these don't exist in the West then...

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Re: Area

0.0116071%

A mere flesh wound...

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Re: This isn't news

It seems probable we read the same article and I cannot find it. My google-fu seems to be on the blink.

What interested me was that when the biologists were counting chromosome breakages at Chernobyl by eye, they found a significant number above expected. Then they gained access to a machine that removed subjective judgement from the count. The number dropped to the same rate as background.

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Death by energy source

Fukushima

"There have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear accident, but over 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes to ensure this. Government nervousness delays the return of many. Official figures show that there have been well over 1000 deaths from maintaining the evacuation, in contrast to little risk from radiation if early return had been allowed."

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-Plants/Fukushima-Accident/

"The global averages in energy-related deaths... with coal at 100,000 deaths per trillion kWhrs (China is the worst), natural gas at 4,000 deaths, biomass at 24,000, solar at 440, and wind at 150. Using the worst-case scenarios from Chernobyl and Fukushima brings nuclear up to a whopping 90 deaths per trillion kWhrs produced, still the lowest of any energy source."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/09/29/forget-eagle-deaths-wind-turbines-kill-humans/

But why let facts get in the way of bashing LP?

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Re: Yablokov

Conference proceedings are not usually peer reviewed. Do you have any evidence that these were?

If you wanted Windows 10, it looks like you've already installed it

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Re: Old MS-Office

And it only occupied 11.2 MB! Winword 2 was another 8.4 MB and Excel 4 a much slimmer 6.1 MB. A trick with upgrades we used when needing to reinstall everything (again) was to just point the installer at the relevant .exe file from the previous version. Them were the days!

Only a CNUT would hold back the waves of the sharing economy

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Re: But! Red! Tape!

The regulation states that you cannot stand on a step closer than 900 mm from the top of the ladder. The third step is 880 mm from the top of the ladder and is not the top step of a nominal 1.8 m ladder (actual height 1.67m in use). The next standard size ladder is marginally higher than the ceiling.

I don't bullshit. In particular, I don't need to bullshit about the stupidity of some of Tasmania's laws and regulations.

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Re: But! Red! Tape!

Friends of mine own a restaurant. They were recently fined for allowing a member of staff to change a light bulb using a stepladder. Standing on the third or higher step is illegal. One must now install scaffolding instead of using a stepladder. Good luck putting up a scaffold without standing on the illegal third step of a stepladder! Gotta love that red tape...

Massive global cooling process discovered as Paris climate deal looms

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Re: So it is all cool with ocean acidification, then?

Sure is. The ocean is everywhere basic (pH 8). Acidic is pH less than 7. I agree that the additional CO2 is affecting plants and animals. The estimated increase in vegetation is 15% meaning animals get more food to eat. Win-win :-)

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Re: @ Martin Gregorie

Actually there's a third way I forgot to mention. What a silly Git! Researchers have lowered the pH of seawater and studied the effect on various shelly organisms, such as coccoliths and concluded that elevated CO2 thins their shells. Unfortunately, CO2 doesn't seem to work, so they lower the pH with hydrochloric acid (HCl) and pretend the effect is the same as higher CO2.

During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, some ~60 million years ago, both CO2 levels and temperatures were much higher than today so you might expect to find evidence that the distribution of coccoliths were affected. No such effect is evident though there was an increase in calcified algae. So it goes...

Of course the estimated 8 C higher than present temperatures were way beyond the 2-3 C needed to reach the tipping point so loudly proclaimed by the likes of Jim Hansen. The only possible explanation for this is that since the Earth had effectively destroyed itself in Thermageddon, God had to recreate the whole lot at a lower temperature and await mankind to start Thermageddon all over again in the 20thC!

And the coccoliths near those seafloor CO2 vents? Well, they have thicker shells than in nearby, higher pH waters.

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"Cooking the planet"

Oddly enough the planet has "cooked" itself a number of times in the past. In the Holocene alone there's the Holocene Optimum, the Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods. All saw major advances in civilisation and increased abundance of life. You would appear to be decrying both.

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Guess my specific gravity

The Köppen climate classification is the most widely used climate classification system. For example, Tasmania where the Git resides is maritime temperate as is England where the Git was first inflicted on an unsuspecting planet. Despite a century of "unprecedented climate change" both places appear to still be maritime temperate.

Six thousand years ago, the Sahara desert of today was inhabited by humans harvesting cereals and herding cattle. Rivers and lakes supported hippoposthumuses, rhinocerarses, jeeryaffes and many other animals reliant on abundant vegetation for their survival.

Believing the latter describes climate change while maritime temperate 100 years ago is the same as maritime temperate today makes me a "climate denier". It's a strange religion...

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Ominously vibrating topiary

"As we're hell bent on deforestation (trees are good oxygen sources)..."

I read that the Drax coal-fired power station in England's green unpleasant land is being converted to burn firewood harvested in the USA and thus Save the Planet. I also read that this will consume 14 acres of trees per week and require the burning of ever so much diesel fuel to carry the trees to Drax. Sounds like deforestation to me.

I read that some of the last remaining forest in Denmark was cut down in order to make room for windmills. Sounds like deforestation to me.

I read that the Asian Brown cloud is largely caused by the cutting down of jungle in Indonesia, much to the detriment of the local Orangutans. Said jungle trees and peat soils are set fire to to make room to grow palm oil to use as biodiesel in Europe. According to a German researcher this generates 16 to 30 times more CO2 than is saved as well as annoying people as far away as Singapore who would prefer clean air to breathe.

Lord save us from The Green Blob!

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@ Martin Gregorie

"CO2 emissions are increasing the acidity of the oceans, which is definitely harmful to creatures with carbonate skeletons. This is known to be harmful to reefs and plankton..."

If you want to make a scientific argument it would help to understand the language of the relevant science. A pH of 8 is NOT acidic; it's basic (alkaline). There are two ways to study the effect of additional CO2 on sea life: sit at a desk and play on a computer, or don some SCUBA gear and go have a look. There are several places where CO2 seeps from the ocean floor thus raising the CO2 content of a region of ocean. They are surrounded by abundant life, shelly fauna even.

http://ocean.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/colorbox_full/public/photos/Laetitia-Pic-4small.jpg?itok=chZWW-Je

Boffins: We know what KILLED the DINOS – and it wasn't just an asteroid

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Re: Current Science

Beat me to it. Have an upvote.

Weird garbled Windows 7 update baffles world – now Microsoft reveals the truth

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Re: Once I was a computer geek...

Have you ever tried to do a mail merge manually? Prep a document prior to importing into a page layout program to minimise the work required? Didn't think so...

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Re: Once I was a computer geek...

" I still can't place a picture where I want it and expect it to stay, I still can't tell what DPI I want on it and page break bugs are still around."

Trying to do DTP with a word processor is like trying to nail jelly to a tree -- an exercise in frustration. Try using a page layout program. If you're serious InDesign, if amateurish is good enough MS Publisher.

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Re: Alienating support

"I'm sure others could add to the list."

Removing "Add to Autocorrect" from the context menu in Office 2013.

Only one upvote I'm afraid...

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Re: Mistake or Hack?

Have an upvote. I guess being a (lapesed) MS Certified Professional/Solution Provider counts as an evangelist. MS seem determined to keep me persisting in my conversion to Linuxen.

WATER SURPRISE: Liquid found on Mars, says NASA

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Re: Facebook

That is Good News!

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Re: Tasty Morsel

Since the atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide surely Thermageddon is imminent and so the soil will soon be hotter than the hinges of Hell.

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Re: Tasty Morsel

Sounds like a job for Dechlorosoma sp.

VW: Just the tip of the pollution iceberg. Who's to blame? Hippies

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Pint

Carboy

Some of us use carboys to make booze:

http://www.homebrewsky.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/What-is-Carboy-300x225.jpg

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Joke

Re: Grr...

This hippy eats vegans: cows, sheep, goats... What do you eat?

Global warming stopped in 1998? No it didn't. If you say that, you're going to prison

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Re: Lewis Page's logical fallacy is...

So why don't you point out where warmists are involved in the actual dissemination of science at the tertiary level? I have already pointed out that the standard text in 3rd year of Big School is TR Oke's Boundary Layer Climates. No mention of CAGW anywhere in that excellent text. The first year geology text The Changing Earth: Exploring Geology and Evolution by James S. Monroe and Reed Wicander is 25-30% about Earth's climates. It contains one sentence relevant to CAGW, and here I paraphrase as my copy is on loan, "some believe that CO2 has an effect on Earth's climate".

If as Kevin Rudd claimed it's "the greatest moral challenge of our time", why all the spin? Wouldn't it make more sense to present tertiary level science as a tool to persuade?

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Re: If one is

It's not anthropogenic so it can't possibly have any effect. Only carbon pollution is anthropogenic...

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FAIL

Re: Dear Lewis...

"No one knows what the consequences will be of anthropogenic green-house gasses; anyone who thinks they do, on either side of the argument, is a fool."

Skeptics * and "consensus" climatologists alike use Modtran 5 to calculate the effect of varying amounts of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

http://www.modtran5.com/

Of course a fool wouldn't know that.

* As always, there's an exception and it's skeptic Dick Lindzen. He calculated the effect of doubling CO2 manually and obtained the same result as Modtran 5. Dick was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a lead author of Chapter 7, "Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks", of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change.

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Hey Lewis...

... is that the same Stanford that ExxonMobil gave $100 million dollars to fund that University's Global Climate and Energy Project? Not forgetting that Shell funds the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia who in turn supply the IPCC with their scary prognostications. Funny how the warmists accuse the likes of you and me of being in the pay of Big Oil when it's them who are on the take. Still waiting for my cheque...

Mine's the coat with the 3rd year university text in the pocket. Boundary Layer Climates by TR Oke. For some odd reason I can't seem to find anything in there about CO2 or AGW.

Australia's Digital Technologies curriculum finally signed off

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Re: Yet another money pit

The Gitling enrolled in university IT. Despite everyone in the class having used MS Word and Excel during the preceding two years of college, they had a compulsory class in how to use them. The lecturer didn't even know how to centre a line of text. Then the Gitling attended a second year lecture in web application development. Halfway through the lecture he asked why there was nothing about security. "Oh, that's something we add on after the application is finished" he was told.

Needless to say the Gitling did not complete his degree. Not to worry though, he's second in charge at his place of work and very well paid by local standards. Not surprising when you consider he can write an app in a couple of days to do what that several thousand dollar add-in for the software they use would have cost!

Ad-blocking super-weapon axed by maker for being TOO effective

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Re: Peace?

I thought it was peace, love and dope!

Blood-crazy climate mosquitoes set to ground Santa's reindeer

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@ tomgnh

Twelve years ago when given a similar question to mine in a university exam, I gave the following:

Six thousand years ago, during the Holocene Optimum/Hypsithermal/Altithermal, what is now the Sahara Desert was a savannah with lakes, rivers, hippopotami, gazelles, giraffes, humans and all manner of beasts and vegetation.

I take it that in my place, you would have asked the invigilator to excuse you while you flew to New Zealand for a quick heart-to-heart with the grandchildren. I was given a Credit in that course. What marks would you have been awarded do you think?

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Here's a trap for the unwary

The Wiki-bloody-pedia has a map of the world's climate zones sourced from the University of Melbourne:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification

So, can anyone identify which of these climate zones have changed over the last 100 years? For example, where I live (Tasmania) is a maritime temperate climate and would appear to have been so back in the early 19th C never mind the 20th. If we have just experienced a century of "unprecedented global climate change", why hasn't this happened in Tasmania? Or is Tasmania not part of "global"?