All well and good mortgages rates being low, but useless if the banks aren’t lending. Also the variable rate loans previously referred to (1.75%) are no longer available, the banks are getting hammered on these loans so they pull them and save their money instead. For evidence of this, see the spectacular failure of project merlin.

The whole edifice of european monetary integration is what is in danger: while there is monetary integration without fiscal integration the eurozone periphery are trapped in a austerity-recessionary spiral.

I agree there is some truth in the Minsky hypothesis, the real problem with the euro is the lack of fiscal integration. It’s really hard however to imagine a fully integrated federal europe under the current circumstances. This is why I think the route will be inaction until the crisis forces action at gunpoint: either literal or metaphorical.

Interestingly, some IBs are now selling FX options in nominal Deutchmarks and Drachma. Still not outright failure, but we’re getting very close indeed. Even the bond markets don’t give an accurate impression of market sentiment: the ECB is making purchases on secondary markets to surpress yields for the PIIGS while the ISDA judgement on the Greek ‘non-default’ has rendered CDS possibly worthless.

TJ, the ‘Euro interest rate’ you refer to is the ECB ‘main refinancing rate’. This is the minimum rate paid by banks to the ECB when acting in its capacity of ‘lender of last resort’. The ECB cannot lend to eurozone governments (hence the EFSF), and even in its current bond market intervention it cannot purchase on the primary markets. Neither governments nor individuals can borrow at the ECB rate. That’s why the PIIGS are f**ed.

Not sure what to think about this, but a couple of things strike me.

If the user and the dealer both failed to spot the bent strut, it is probably pretty minor (although obviously big enough to cause a problem). What amazes me is the impression I get that Nicolai find it unimaginable that a fault could slip through their QC. Anything built with humans involved can and does go wrong.

The other thing is the prevailing sentiment that small scale european ‘hand crafted’ type producers will somehow have better QC than mass producers in Taiwan. The guys in Taiwan closely control their production yield and will know the rate of warranty returns for a particular product. This is why they can price in replacements and hand out new frames when there is a problem. In my opinion, mass production is one of the most amazing feats of engineering in the modern world, I don’t get the impulse to have something expensively made on a small scale for reasons other than custom geometry/sizing or exclusivity.

Depends on the usage. If you’re using them in an environment with high-frequency noise (bakerloo line for example) then active ones start to fall down.

Ear-canal types like shure and ultimate ears give good enough isolation (~30dB with foam tips) and I find them comfortable enough to wear for a long haul flight.

Feel like I should clarify a couple of things:

I’m definitely not saying that mentally ill people should all be locked up. I just find it depressing that people in need of help might be let down because of cuts and them generally having much of a voice (compared to students, the armed forces, other parts of the NHS etc).

Also the guy that threatened me was definitely not a pisshead. Drunks are slow and glazed while this guy had an intensity that I have only seen before in people having a psychotic episode (not that I’m an expert).

More than anything I was wondering if anybody else had noticed an uptick in this kind of thing. Although the plural of anecdote is not evidence, a quick poll can be illuminating. I’m all for respecting everybody (rare around here, I know), but inevitably some people need care for their own and others’ safety.

Was wondering as I have had about half a dozen experiences in the past week of people who were on the borderline of ‘eccentric’ and ‘quite aggressive’, and yesterday a guy on tottenham court road threatened to cave my head in (and then various others walking past – no provocation).

Love my Van36 RC2s, but not sure i’d be up for paying the current asking price. BOS prices look more reasonable every year.

Actually on topic, and might be actual advice rather than piss taking, but…

Have a look at unis outside the UK. Can be cheaper and have far better riding than anywhere, even in scotland.

Top of my list if I were you would be ETH in Zurich, not sure of the fees, but it is a really world class institution.

Also worth checking out are Grenoble, Politecnico di Torino, TU Munich and TU Vienna.

These are all great technical schools and ETH in particular can be considered as up there with MIT, Cambridge and Stanford for engineering. Also you can be in the mountains in 30 mins with chair lifts and 30 minute descents….

Wow, some of the reasoning employed here actually gave me a headache.

Speaking as a member of the IOP*, this is as previously noted a restating of Russell’s paradox:

“if R is the set of all sets which do not contain themselves, does R contain itself?”

Incidentally, this forms an example of Goedel’s incompleteness theorem, which was part of the reason that Russell gave up on maths and became a philosopher.

* I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the IOP

Kikuchi sushi just off Tottenham Court Road, Nopi in soho for more middle eastern stuff.

Okay, a ‘white’ spectrum is one where power would be equal for all frequencies (different frequencies of EM radiation have different wavelengths as: speed of light = wavelength x frequency). This would look like a flat horizontal line on the graph. In reality, objects like stars, lightbulbs etc might appear to be white but this is actually only being approximately white over the range of wavelengths that we can see.

We only see wavelengths from about 400nm to 750nm (‘visible’ light or EM radiation). These individual wavelengths are colours when we separate them out: a pure 400nm source will appear as blue while a 750nm source will appear as red. When these visible wavelengths are all combined with equal power, we see the result as white.

This is different to a signal or spectrum being ‘white’ in the technical sense which means to have equal power for all frequencies which are present (actually the precise definition is a bit more subtle, but I can’t be bothered with maths right now).

My point about the sun being black was slightly facetious. In general objects derive their colour from the wavelengths of light that they transmit or reflect: a red LED emits light at about 750nm; a red filter on a white lightbulb absorbs all visible wavelengths other than those at 750nm; and a red sweater reflects light only at around 750nm.

While I’m not sure what the absorption spectrum of the sun is, I would bet that it absorbs almost everything, while the emission spectrum is very close to that of a black body. This is the subtle point: while self evidently the sun does not look black, it has the characteristics of a ‘black body’ which is an abstraction of physics.

Nice wiki on black bodys.

A black body is a body that absorbs EM radiation at all wavelengths (reflects nothing and so is black). It has a particular radiative spectrum (given in the figure above) which the suns radiative spectrum fits pretty well. Although this spectrum is approximately flat over visible wavelengths, it is definitely not flat (or white) over all wavelengths.

So as an emitter the sun is coloured in approximately the same way as a black body, and as a reflector the sun is approximately black (absorbs everything).

Actually, the sun is a pretty good approximation of a black body:

So it should be black.

Interesting stuff, IME you can hit a 40GB limit pretty quick if you go at it with the downloads/streaming etc. As folks have stated, if 15k is the speed of the line, then no other service provider will help. Not sure of the details, but unless you’re 200km from the exchange i’m pretty sure you either have a fault or throttling. Getting BT to check for a fault is pretty straight forward, if they are throttling you there are still things you can do.

Getting a (nominally) unlimited data package should stop them from throttling you for going over your limit, while changing the port on your bittorrent client ‘may’ dodge the torrent restrictions.

Still, fibre to the home and 10G for everyone should be maybe 2020? Can you just wait a bit?

Wonder how this will play out with more students going for ‘premium’ degrees like science and engineering in order to get better paid jobs. Students already cost far more to teach than the government is willing to pay, so this could either make these courses the preserve of the privately educated (entrance exams for STEM are now common at the top unis) or we will see an explosion of cash cow foreign students subsidising the EU/home students.

Scotland is a poor example TJ, lots of wind makes good for wind power, and the position of islands related to the north and irish seas makes for good tidal power.

While its good for Scotland to take advantage of this, the rest of the world aren’t so fortunate.

This is why India and China are both relying on Thorium based MSR technology for their next generation of reactors. The first of these should be coming online in the next 10 years or so.

Also, I believe this was the first commercial scale Thorium reactor. Small, but far bigger than any tidal generation plant currently working.

TJ, apologies if I appear to be dodging the question, I’m merely trying to make a point. The R&D money needs to be spent on something to improve our low-carbon generation capacity, fission scales up in a way that other things simply don’t.

As I said, I don’t have the answers to your specific questions about implementation, that is a question for large teams of nuclear engineers to puzzle over. Uranium is relatively abundant in the earths crust, and Thorium even more so. The cost of fuel is actually very low for fission power, which is one of its most attractive features.

Energy conservation and green power are all well and good, but you still need to get the power from somewhere. Are you aware of the amount of rare earth metals that are required for large-scale PV/wind generation? The price of rare earths alone might kill these technologies, when compared to nuclear.

My point is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong about getting a thousand or so years of energy from fission, while fossil fuels (clean or not) will run out much sooner.

I’m not sure about the problems that you cite with the abundance of Uranium, the world nuclear organisation says there are 5.5m tonnes of accessible reserves @$130/kg while global usage is about 60k tonnes using exclusively once-through reactors. This might only give us a hundred years or so, but as price goes up or efficiency goes up (ie FBR) this time will get much longer. I think I’ve seen a figure somewhere that FBRs will give us ~1000 years of energy at current global consumption levels using terrestrial Uranium, while using fuel from the sea extends this by a factor of 50?

Thorium is in my opinion a much more likely candidate, as it seems to produce far shorter lived waste. Also this is far more abundant, and produces no weaponisable isotopes, so yes this technology should definitely be shared globally.

New tech doesn’t come magically from nothing, it comes slowly from the hard work and long hours of many thousands of scientists and engineers. This work needs to be done and we have little time to waste.

I’m surprised you’re advocating for ‘clean’ fossil fuels though, when these fuels are inherently less clean (vast amounts of mining waste etc) and less sustainable in that at current rates of consumption, cost per unit energy is exploding. I very much agree with conservation efficiency and (limited) renewables though.

Interestingly, I hadn’t seen the reference to the 1 million casualties study of Chernobyl. I did read the book though: not peer reviewed and some fairly serious methodological flaws in my opinion (e.g. assuming that any increase in mortality over the entire former USSR was due to radiation when incomes and access to healthcare were collapsing). Most studies that I’m aware of come out in the region of 10-100k casualties, broadly similar to the Banqiao dam disaster.

Also, regarding safety concerns, compare the death tolls for Chernobyl and the Banqiao Dam

renewable is not inherently safer.

I think that you might have misunderstood the tenor of my post TJ, I’m not suggesting that all we need to do is get building and everything will be ok. It’s also important to be clear on the difference between a technology (fast breeder reactor) and an implementation (Phoenix).

A particular implementation of a technology not being good is not a reason to write off the technology as a whole. The point that I’m trying to make is that while fission might not be a panacea at the moment, there is huge potential (unlike fossil fuels for example).

The problems that you point out are a reason that we should put considerable resources into R&D, in order to achieve a degree of sustainability using fission which is not possible with fossil fuels. Essentially, we need better implementations of fission, the fundamental physics of the situation indicates that we might get thousands of years of energy if we do. The same thing cannot be said of fossil fuels regardless of implementation, this can only be a stop-gap.

The question of whether renewables can become a sustainable source of energy is much less clear. The problem is that the densities of energy available for renewables are incredibly small, and we therefore need to devote huge land resources to generate significant amounts of energy.

The current power industry strategy for filling the capacity gap seems to be either throwing up gas plants which are cheap to build and come online quickly, or to convert gas to biomass which is economically viable only due to subsidies.

I don’t pretend to have a solution to the current squeeze on capacity, and I don’t think that anyone else does either. What I do think is that over the next couple of centuries we need to put some serious engineering into this, or we will find that living standards decline drastically due to the cost of energy.

I suspect that this may be opening a can of worms, but:

-We do have large supplies of fissionable material. Breeder reactors can reduce the amount of waste produced, and reduce the amount of fuel required by reprocessing fissile waste. Also, huge amounts of Uranium exists in the oceans.

-Current commercial reactors are almost exclusively uranium based, newer reactors are likely to utilise liquid salt fuels like Thorium. These materials are far more abundant and are easier to make safe.

-It is important to realise that currently used technology was driven by the need to produce weapons grade materials, not to generate power. Once this constraint is removed (and it is being, if you look at fission reactor development plans around the world).

Much of the currently used tech is a cold war hangover, as is the public attitude to “nuclear”. Anything with the word nuclear in it scares the shit out of people, why do you think it is never used for medical treatments?

Not sure I would agree with you there TJ. While there are undoubtably some people out there like James Delingpole, Nigel Lawson etc who are essentially advocates for the big fossil fuel concerns, MacKay is not one of them.

Unlike most writers on the topic of energy/climate change, his book is fully sourced and he provides basic ‘back of the envelope’ maths to convey his message to the layman.

Not sure how he’s supported by the power generation companies: he’s actually a physics professor at Cambridge website here[/url] (I would really recommend his book on information theory), along with being being a bit of a lefty-environmentalist type.

Would recommend that anybody interested in the subject read the book (free online). Quick synopsis (of questionable accuracy): fossil fuels of various kinds are running out quickly; we don’t have space for sufficient amounts of generation capacity via renewables; fusion requires amounts of tritium and deuterium that will run out quickly; there is a huge amount of fissionable material on earth, but we need to figure out how to best harvest it, make better reactors and improve waste management.

He is quite clear that a variety of generation techniques are required and does not suggest the entire world just relies on fission. Do you really believe that the UK could survive beyond the next couple of hundred years without some kind of fission?

Lots of good information here (Cameron advisor, but don’t let that put you off):

David MacKay’s book[/url]

While CCS might be useful as a short term stop-gap, it is in no way a panacea. I think that the public attitude to fission power is the biggest problem we have in terms of energy.

Read a bit of Gervais’ twitter about this yesterday, depressingly he sees it as a campaign by the PC brigade and the jealous losers. I’m starting to think he’s actually a modern day Bernard Manning. I’m starting to think that Gervais was nothing but a mouthpiece for Karl Pilkington.

Coincidentally, has anybody noticed that he has TWO tv shows coming out in the next couple of weeks. You could almost be forgiven for thinking that he’s deliberately stirring up a load of $hit to get himself in the papers and generate publicity for his new televisual pap.

Have to say I’m a bit libertarian on the use of language. What irks me is that he’s getting a cheap laugh from idiots. This is compounded by the fact that he is incredibly rich and powerful. If there was some moral or philosophical point to it then it could be justified, but I don’t think thats the case.

Best troll thread ever: daily mailisms, offending every possible group and plenty of opportunity to say “i’m not racist, but…”

Personally, i never see any blacks, gays or heathens cycling. I think this is because they can’t balance and are afraid of tyres.

Hob Nob, are you using the 200×57 shock with offset bushings? sounds like a cool way to get around the slightly long rear end of the alpine while keeping the same travel. Do you know what the warranty situation is with a mod like this?

The crossing outside ULU on Torrington Place is my favourite place ever for watching fixies crash. Just look at all the skid marks on the cycle lane and you get some idea of the amount of ‘heavy skidding’ going on.

Still though, the brakes ruin the nice clean lines on those cool track bikes…

Interesting stuff. My approach to this kind of thing has a few tidbits you guys might find interesting:

-Use any OS other than windows (Linux, Mac OSX etc). This is the most reliable way of preventing viruses etc, but either expensive (Mac) or a PITA (Linux). However, if you really must use windows:

-Use a decent bit of free anti-virus software (I like AVG-free). Keep this updated daily, and be sure to update windows at least weekly, otherwise anti-virus software is pointless.

-If all else fails, format the HDD and re-install everything (not just a repair install or something). This is a real PITA, but if you know what you’re doing is only an evenings worth of work. Doing this regularly also ensures you don’t have masses of redundant software on your machine or a heavily fragmented HDD. This can be most easily done if you are either disciplined with backing up your data, or simply have two HDD in your machine: one for system, software etc and a second for data, media, downloaded filth etc.

Season first and rest well. Other than that its all personal preference, unless you’re putting on some cream and or cheese based sauce: that is simply wrong.

Not bad but you need to lose the brakes, put some cards in the spokes and get some nice flat bars:

about 2 fist widths should do you.

Also should wear your sisters jeans

Back of the net!

Was going to use my old 36 vans either way, because 1: I like them a lot, and 2: a new fork will cost me the thick end of 1k!!

Guess coil on both ends will make the difference in frame weight negligible?

I have to say that this is entirely predictable, the scientists involved knew it was almost certainly an experimental error and they still published.

Not only did they publish, but they hit the PR circuit and got blanket coverage on TV and newspapers down to dossers on internet forums like this.

The whole point is the sensation. I’m betting that around about now some people have to decide about the next few years funding for CERN and they have to make themselves look worthwhile. This is certainly true of NASA, they periodically spit out stories of life on the moon / mars / some other galaxy, almost always right before congress looks at their funding.

Real science is almost always massively parallel, slow, incremental and (in the short term) predictable. As i always say to students, if your experiment looks too good to be true, thats because it is.

Definitely mushrooms: oyster or porcini if you can get them. The only food that makes me think about cheating on meat……

Currently my shock is 200x50mm. I spoke to TFT and apparently it is cheaper to down than up in size (machining rather than new parts) about 120 vs 200.

Is the weight difference between the Alpine and 5 really so massive? I have relatively light but strong parts (crossmax, hope, x0 etc) and would like to only be changing tyres for a DH day. I thought the difference in weights for the frames was ~200g?

I guess the question is then, how much is a second hand CCDB worth?? 200x50mm and the 2008 model (nitrided body). I guess that could work out cheaper than a mod from TFT.

Cheers guys, was thinking of using the CCDB for uplifts and the alps, but it seems like the rp23 would just sit around gathering dust.

Not quite sure exactly what geekbench measures, but here’s my understanding:

CPUs dont degrade, they might completely break but the chip itself wont degrade as such. The problem you’re having might be dust, fluff etc stuck in the case which stops the heat getting out. The CPU then turns itself down (reduces it’s clock speed) in order to prevent damage. A related issue is that you might have a damaged temperature sensor that is causing the CPU throttling.

Alternatively, a damaged hard disk is also a pretty good candidate. These are mechanical devices which get damaged, and also magnetic which degrades over time. A new HDD would probably get you a decent amount of speed even if its not the problem (I would recommend a solid-state SDD, expensive but really quick). You should be able to check this with some kind of disk diagnosis tool which will tell you how many damaged sectors there are on the disk.

Alternatively, just buy a new one. I hammer my laptops every day and they rarely last more than 2 or 3 years. You would be amazed by the speed of even a new macbook air, although they are expensive.

Could be the CPU throttling itself as its getting too hot. This could be because the case is full of crud. Possibly take the case apart and blast it with compressed air to shift any dust/fluff, particularly around the fans and heatsinks.

IME a university is a great place to get some good engineering done on the cheap. However, you need to be doing something that they want to do if you need it done anytime soon, and also be prepared to pay through the arse for it if needs be.

In my place there are two kinds of industrial project: ones that we want to do, where we will do it quickly, on the cheap and publish everything possible (not likely for a workstand unless you have done something truly amazing); and then the projects that we do for cash, where the work is fit in around everything else as a last priority and we will try to milk every last penny from you.

Hope that helps

This is one of those few occasions in life when I can hand on heart actually recommend a crank bros product. Looks good, doesn’t break, even feels nice and solid in the hand.

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