As in politically stable sources of supply?

Exactly.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of nuclear (fission) power! I may be a bit of a hippy and despite or because of this I do realise that nuclear power is not nearly as polluting as using fossil fuels.

And from eariler:

nuclear cargo ships

That’s actually not a bad plan, if they were sufficiantly massive. Damn, it could actually happen! Wow! 😮

EDIT:

People are confusing burning hydrogen with fission.

I’m not sure anyone is… 😉

[catches grenade] Actually, not a lot’s wrong with fission – the waste issue is rather a minor concern and quite easy to deal with. The biggest problem is ‘stable’ sources of fission material… [lobs grenade back]

Mwhahahahaha, nope, not vegetarian, even ‘worse’…

Now my bias is obvious, and we should perhaps leave it at that.

EDIT: and pigs have personality!

What is this, twenty questions…? 😉

Have you ever been on a farm an seen the living conditions of the animals

Oh yes.

right through to the slaughter process?

Admittedly, no.

I certainly saw enough, at different farms, to marvel at the industrious of it. Even on rather small-scale farms the animals are kept in the most efficient way possible – which is more often than not not the most humane, comfortable and stimulating manner the animals could live in.

Even having seen these farms, we need to remember that most of the animal products we consume come from far, far away, as our wallets demand. You The animals get what you pay for – you don’t pays a lot: they don’t gets a lot, in the way of humane treatment.

Oh balls, this has got beyond mere trolling now! I’m sorry indeed for diverting the course of this thread, but I am simply unable to understand the killing of sentient things just to provide us with food.

It is absolutely beyond my ability to resist trolling this thread:

Blimey, that’s pretty horrific, and no way for a dog to be allowed to behave, however, if you honestly believe that the commercial use of animals doesn’t see far greater cruelty, suffering and subjective horror on a minute-by-minute basis then you are, in my sub-bridge-dwelling view, rather tragically deluded.

the ancient history of the region has no relevance today

So Jews have no reason other than the Bible for claiming a right to their “holy land”?

(Apologies for basic questions: I saw the title proclaiming that this was an Idiot’s Guide and thought, “That’s for me!)

I was rather starry-eyes with the possibility that humans might have created something that had never existed anywhere else in space and time.

I could ramble on about: how that’s a bit like artistic works; infinite monkeys; and how nuclear stability is the reason I’d like to give for riding a steel-framed bike.

But luckily for you, I shalln’t 😉

Lastly… don’t be a dick. No one likes the guy who tries passing at really inappropriate times and ends up … crashing as he’s got himself in a silly place.

Thought I’d be smart once and pass a whole pack of slower riders by cruising past through the ferns and stuff next to the singletrack. Obviously I went head over heels into a massive hole that appeared too late to avoid whilst every single one of them (and plenty more) passed me as I tried to extricate myself from my bike. I have no doubt that they were thinking “blimey, that guy shouldn’t have been such a dick” and, of course, laughing their arses off…

Why did I do this? Inpatience. Everyday I bemoan drivers’ inpatience whilst commuting yet it hit me too. Not agressively, but just enough for me to think I should try to beat the system. How I could have avoided this:

RealMan

Try and get a good position at the start, otherwise you will have to wait behind everyone when the first bit of fireroad turns to singletrack.

I was a calm and patient English gentleman who elected not to get (nearer) to the front of the starting line pack and thus paid for it.

Also: Resist the urge to tell those who scream “Rider!!!!!!” at you from behind to jolly-well **** off. Their manners, courtesy, pleases, thank yous, and any abilities to overtake lesser riders like the cycling gods that they are go out of the window during racing.

Top, top tip: have fun – I’ve always had a great time.

Devil’s advocate here:

If the area that is currently known as Israel was ‘handed back’ to the Palestinians/Arabians, where would the Jewish people go?

In other words, how much of it is American-backed expansioneering in order to carve out a space in Arabia, and how much of it is simply one people’s desire to have a place to call home?

Out of the courtroom I am an idealist who wishes religion would just bugger off and allow humans to get one step closer to realising that we’re all, well, human, and equal.

No Rob Halford yet…?

A thoroughly silly song, but so rocking it hurts.

It’s a weather balloon. I can tell from the pixels and having seen a few ‘shops in my time.

Wot deadlydarcy said.

After that, The Priest.

Two questions:

1. Are you desperate for some?
2. Are you psychologically stable/sufficiently heartless enough to deal with the fallout of nobbing her and leaving her to die?

If the answer to both of the above is ‘yes’ then go for it.

B (27 hours/3 days)

+ A (studying part-time)

Some more pondering has realised an even wider analogy: taxes. You can use hospitals and roads and libraries and forests (take the bait, take the bait..) even if you don’t pay taxes. These things are fixed costs that will exist without one person’s input, but the input from many one persons will offset those costs.

Aw shite, that was less coherent than I hoped it would be, but in the mean time I strongly recommend a read of this book: ’The Logic Of Life’ by Tim Harford[/url] as it contains some thought processes that might help you wade through the difference one person’s input can make (pertinent to the above analogies). It’s also got lots of other fascinating insights into how economics can explain quite a lot. Incidentally, I borrowed the book from a friend: does that make me (more of) a pirate? Yar? Does this recommendation offset some of my ship-boarding ways?

Further to the Lovefilm discussion above, do libraries pay more for their copies of books? Also, if I buy a book from a charity shop, the author obviously gets no royalties, yet I have a copy: piracy…?

What a **** minefield. I only know one thing for certain: I’ve spent more time downloading stuff than I’ve spent actually watching it and I reckon lots of it I’ll never get around to watching, e.g. my attempt to rekindle my X-files interest lapsed after less than half a series…

More fool me! 🙄

The stealing DVDs and bikes and cars and handbags analogies that the film companies and the STW collective have put forward are bunk.

A much more comprehensible analogy is this: train tickets. Downloading music and films (that you otherwise would have bought – a grey area and a half that argument…) illegally is EXACTLY like travelling without a ticket on a train: the train is going where it’s gonna go anyway and it won’t cost the operator any more to run it if you’re on the train (the artist made the film/song/book anyway and it won’t cost them any more to make if you download a copy). Buying your ticket or paying for the work offsets some of the cost of producing that service thus making it more likely that that train will run in future (recieve subsidies, whatever) or that the artist will continue to release tunes and flicks.

¿Comprende, amigos? 😉

For the record, since it seems fashionable to state our stances, I started downloading illegally in 2000 when Napster was king (ah, the nostalgia that wells up when recalling dial-up piracy…) then lost interest until Kazaa was usable a few years later and finally got out of it when that started to wane. I was reintroduced to it a few months ago by a colleague who waxed on about Bittorrent’s greatness and seemingly effortlessly sorted me out with a few films. I tried it and was hooked. Since then I’ve filled a 500gb hardrive and am on to the next one.

Boring personal history aside, why do I do it? One word: laziness. It is infinitely more convenient to google “blah blah blah torrent”, click a Pirate Bay link and have a film in ten minutes than it is to obtain it by ANY other means. I claim no moral right or delude myself into believing that I’m some sort of pioneer anarchist. I’m just a lazy bum who hasn’t bought an album or DVD or been to the moving picture house for years. I’ve no excuses, I know it’s illegal.

I do, however, always buy a train ticket since the introduction of almost universal automatic ticket barriers. Perhaps the analogy could continue side-by-side. Discuss…

The bolt head looks quite hemmed on those two sides, but is there enough room to fit in a concave and convex washer combo (á la v-brake pads/Avid tri-align) under the head? (Using a longer bolt if need be.)

If not, the Y(ish)-shaped washer is a fine idea for stopping the head ‘sinking’ into its rut.

8/10

Truly excellent use of swear-filter avoidance and capslock, but marks lost for no multiple exclamation marks and asking for soul-searching advice at the end. A fine rant.

Like it no, klickage is the word you’re after 😉

To try to say that we should all go vegy or vegan may be a solution but it just is not going to happen.

Don’t think anyone has stated that at all.[/quote]

I did say that, cos it is a solution, and I also said it’s probably not gonna happen. Shame really.

no real environmental reason to completely eliminate pork, chicken, goat, rabbit…

Wild rabbit, and other “game” may well be very sustainable, but there’s no way it could possibly feed the current huge consumer demand for meat. Chickens and pigs though… just where exactly in the world do you reckon their feed comes from? I’ll make it easy with two options: home or abroard? Or: a sustainable source or not…?

And those arguing about teeth: just stop it. Only silly vegans point to our teeth and go “Imma a horse! Derp!” The others know that our omnivorous bodies can indeed make healthy use of animals as food but also realise that, as I think I might have mentioned, we don’t need to. At all. I’m not vegan for environmental (well, not primarily), health or hipster-cool reasons; I’m vegan because making animals suffer for our ‘needs’ and then killing them is just pointless. Ramble over.

Edit: (Ramble on!) Oh Cougar, there’s a few things wrong with your post but sadly I’m late for work and can’t point out the holes. Would indeed be nice to have a few more options when eating out, agreed!

Here ya go, boys:

http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/Samsung-b2710%5D

Video (in Russian) of dudes driving over it in the snow, and more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ5UUcO7xiU%5D

Fave bit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WJ5UUcO7xiU#t=332s%5D

Tough enough? If only it had wifi it would be the best phone ever but then I guess if you’re using it in situations where you need it to be rugged, that area is probably not covered by a Starbuck’s hotspot…

Was just about to get one, but this thread has me pondering the San Francisco now! Any current owners know if it has GPS?

Wow, magowen, that’s a really flipping good point! It would also mean jobs created in the production industry. Definitely a step in the right direction for animal welfare.

Further to what I rambled on about above, however, what would we feed animals reared in this country on? Probably what most animals in Europe are fed on: grain and soya imported from the Americas. Sustainable…?

I am very much against the blanket notion that all production of animal products is necessarily less sustainable than the vegan alternative projected.

Me too. I completely concede that most people living, say, above 66° North need animal products to continue their lifestyle: vegan Inuit are probably less sustainable.

I had a rant on another ‘forum’ (4chan, off all the possible places to attempt to argue…) and the point I made there was basically: “Using land to grow food to then feed that to animals and then feed the animals to humans is retarded. If you don’t know why learn2food chain- trophic levels- energy flows, ****”

That all production of animal products is necessarily less sustainable than the vegan alternative projected is a blanket notion that is utterly true for 99.9% of the animal products consumed in this country.

Watch out there, Kunstler, that pay-as-you-go Dolphin package seems like a good deal but is limited to the utterly ridiculous monthly download limit of 100mb. I can imagine that that’s quite an easy limit to break wide open!

All of the above is wrong, it’s the hand throttle. 😉

(Sorry, hora, unsettled spirits cannot possess a holy Ford, by Ford!)

No, but wait, all this arguing is pointless: if we stopped eating animals then we wouldn’t need to worry about how domesticated animals are kept.

It’s really that simple.

(Though I do concede that this scenario is unlikely to materialise so perhaps my pointing out that the argument is pointless is also pointless. Just eat less meat for now, people, cos every little helps.)

---

Unrelatedly, can you possibly back this statement up with any actual sources:

If I were a cow, I wouldn’t like being painted green

?
The coconut-pelting they would indeed probably not enjoy, but just as the lion pictured above is a boring shade of beigey-brown in order to blend into the background and more effectively sneak up on its prey, perhaps cattle would rather appreciate their prey not being able to see it walking over to have a munch.

(assuming no-one’s invented windows yet)

I’m a battery cow, and Windows 7 was my idea.

more than likely they will have loads

Having spent most of my working life in a bike workshop I would say that they may well not have loads, sadly.

It’s a curious thing but here’s why: the vast majority of square taper BBs that get replaced are on lower-end “hybrid” bikes that come supplied with BBs that are honestly and truthfully made out of coagulated milk solids. A Shimano unit is then fitted but these bikes don’t actually get used enough in rubbish conditions to wear out the frankly incredible UN54, hence why not many worn out UN54s are replaced meaning their plastic cups are not available for donation.

Blimey, that was a long and boring factoid.

Ah, glad to see Junkyard has finally made an appearance on this one. 🙂

I’ll just add my tuppence to his wise words.

The debate goes something like: are cattle better off reared in fields or big sheds?

Being as how we don’t actually need to consume animals or animal products the logical option I would add to this is that cows are better off not being reared at all.

Is it just one crack or has it actually split in two? I’ve used numerous plastic cups with a single crack in with no bother – it just supports the BB itself and a crack doesn’t seem to affect it any way.

Roll with it, it’ll be fine.

I suspect the word ‘affected’ is used for a reason.

The two gay blokes I work with have on seperate occasions both referred to gay guys who do the lisp and the “fabulous” as f***ing fags” – go figure!

+1 for Daft Punk

And I’ll get shot down in flames for mentioning these two in the same sentence but my favourite bands to commute to (yes, in London traffic!) are Oasis & Judas Priest.

The Priest WILL get you up any hill!

Woah, I thought it had to be aesthetic AND athletic!!

Rossi may have a sexy new bike that’s certainly aesthetic, but what on Earth is athletic about having **** stabilisers on it??

Mods, just shut this sham thread down NOW please.

They won’t get a chance to wear as you’ll use them for approx. 100m before realising that they’re uncomfortable (their words: “Greentyres do feel a little different”) and, as they don’t deform as you’re used to, will give a distinct lack of grip in cornering…

Air is a mixture of gases.

99.99% of which are ‘mundane’. Possibly it’s even less than 1×10^-2% that’s not mundane, but either way I still stand by my definition of air as a gas, in the same way that beer is a liquid.

mbuk was wrong

Probably.

Actually, I am an idiot, but not for any reason related to this little exchange. Apology appreciated, nonetheless! 😉

I’m glad we’ve all learned something today, even if it is only that we should be riding our bikes rather than worrying about what gas we put in the tyres.

MrK, it appears that I’m so much of an idiot that I fail to see how I’m an idiot…

What you just said is absolutely true, but it would make naff all difference what gas you use (so long as you stick to the ‘mundane’ ones we’re talking about here: helium, nitrogen, air).

Please point out where my idiocy lies.

helium is heavier than air at tyre pressures

Ha ha ha ha ha!

bigger molecules (appaerently) so roll ever so slightly faster

Ho ho ho ho ho ho!

No, really, stop, this is too much, I may actually burst at the ridiculousness.

If you’re a troll feigning innocence, you win, D0nk, you win!

EDIT:

you need a greater volume of helium compared to normal air to achieve the same pressures

This stuff just gets better and better!!!

Press F13 on your keyboard to reveal secret helium filling technique for easy ghetto tubeless!