The future is Nuclear. Ignore the whining and increasingly irrelevant NGOs and their like who harp on that we should each own our own farmstead with our own chicken and goat and wear clothes made of grass.

There’s not a lot that most people can do about any of it – most aren’t wealthy enough to be early adopters or powerful enough to influence policy. By the time I (and quite likely you) have an electric car (or motorbike for me) it’ll be because everyone does. Keep recycling and putting in loft insulation though.

But we the human race already have the next energy technology, as soon as we start deploying it en mass we’ll be fine. (Will be quite funny to see “nuclear free” Germany buying the bulk of their electricity from nuclear generation in France. Buy shares in EDF now!)

That is gorgeous.
(And the fence doesn’t even need painting.)

Anything that encroaches an Advanced Stop Line at a red traffic light other than a bicycle and it’s rider shall be vapourised without any reimbursement to the owner and/or their dependants

Cycle happily to an ASL, and fwoosh! “Ah, my clothes! My backpack! My child who was in the kiddie seat!” 😆

I think I’d abolish the ASL – crap solution to a non-problem invented by a moron after zero minutes thought. The old system of “two wheelers pull in at the front, and no-one cares” was much better.

Found a ripped off deer leg one time. Not sure a hunter would do that, or a fox. Velociraptor maybe!

Saw some little boar type things in the Forest of Dean. Didn’t expect that.

I remain utterly unmoved by most recent personal computing hardware. Tablets come out, a big phone with no phone capability, consume only functionality, and 400, 500 notes plus? Then, to make them useful, we get tablets with keyboards. And they cost even more.

A coupla years ago you could buy a netbook for 250 quid and sling a USB 3G dongle in it.

Where’s the step forward there?

Now the niftiness of the cloudiness of modern software and media is quite something. But I still asked for DVDs for Christmas… 😆

I grew up right by a bit of woodland and some old railways tracks and army ranges, so all my bikes went offroad. My first was a Raleigh Chippy – a singlespeed fixy! Then a coupla Raleigh Boxers, also singlespeed and with big mudguards that made them look like a motocross bike. Then a Raleigh Superburner BMX. Then, when I’d been mountain biking for about 10 years something amazing happened – mountain bikes arrived in Surrey! I got an Apollo Atomic. It had GEARS!

Anyway the first, my chippy, looked like this:

An agency sent a guy for an interview for the position of satellite systems engineer. New nothing about ephemeris or orbits or anything. When asked what he currently did he said he fitted sky dishes to houses.

(How is that petition to make engineer a protected title going?)

A guy I worked with had a very modern car, but made like one of those 1920’s soap dishes with pram wheels. He reckoned that was immense fun. (When he said tyres were tricky to get someone quick as a flash suggested mothercare! 😆 )

Fukushima was a ringing endorsement of nuclear power. A very old station built in the wrong place got hit by an earthquake of a magnitude it wasn’t designed to withstand, and a wave of a size it wasn’t designed to withstand, and … Nothing happened! No godzilla rising from the waves dripping green goo, absolutely no health issues attributable to radiation. (Though I recall there were health issues related to being crushed to death by a falling crane.)

Nevertheless, the media eagerly leapt on every rumour that a gieger counter somewhere might have clicked, and some mouth breathers thought the cladding blown off by a hydrogen explosion was “a nuclear explosion”.

A technical interview:
“We want this interview to be language agnostic, just answer in your favourite language or pseudocode.”
“OK, sure.”
“Right, here’s the SQL questions.”
“…?”

A friend went to an interview at my place of work where the interviewer would ask a question then play with her phone during the answer. The deluded cow was the MD’s secretary so thought she was “second in command” and did this to everyone to show she was important.

Nukes are the power of the future. Alarmist NGOs have shrieked until it’s regulated to the point of farce – see here for a run down of the real severity of a load of “secret” “radioactive” leaks reported by a cynical non-journalist. man admits responsibilty for bases biggest ever radioactive leak. We already saw that those pools are safe to SWIM in FFS!

All that “waste” is only waste in the context of an old reactor designed for producing bombs with a by product of electricity. To a modern reactor it’s called “fuel”. ALL of it. How useful and abundant is nuclear energy? Another xkcd for ya here.[/url]

There’s more energy in the uranium in coal than the coal in coal. And coal, coal dust, and ash isn’t even considered nuclear waste.

Huge tracts of land. Then I’d carve trails and berms and jumps and rocks and climbs and bombholes all over the bits of land on every scale from BMX to Humvee. Then I’d surround the land with signs saying ‘no trespassing’, rip down the fences, and walk away.

What testable predictions does this new model correctly make that the current one doesn’t?

There’s an old saying in Physics: “if you have something to say, write an equation. If you have nothing to say, write an essay (or make a youtube video)”.

To keep with the typical calibre of a DD contestant – A mountain bike with a motor. It’d be amazing, you could go uphill as fast as down! It’s called a motor-mountain-bike! Then when they tell me these already exist I’d get all sweaty and stroppy and say they’re not the same, then make up a desperate innovation on the spot like having 23 wheels and a microwave.

the perfection of nuclear fission

…Er, have you been away? From the planet, I mean? 🙂

Need to read up about the Nazis emsz

Wow, Godwin’s in six posts.
Is that a record?

I could be (in fact, I might actually be) a veggie-wot-eats-fish; except when it becomes even the *slightest* bit difficult. That might sound useless but probably leads to being a VWEF about 99% of the time. It falls down when one can’t bring oneself to care if a yummy desert uses the wrong sort of gelatine, or if one goes to a restaurant and doesn’t want nut roast. Or goes to a dinner party and doesn’t want nut roast.

Can’t be bothered reading the labels of everything and if I’m going out I want yummy nom noms, so what if I don’t usually eat meat? I don’t usually have three courses and a bottle of wine either. This is a treat.

And although the ideological veggies (wot eat fish) would say that doesn’t count, it’s 99% of the way there, with 0% of the hassle.

Muc-off do a visor anti mist spray, I use it and it’s great.

Tyler Hamilton will make more money from his book describing how he cheated than Bessette or I will make in all our years of our honest labour.

Aren’t there laws that prohibit people from making money from books about crimes they committed?

Not an actor, but a moment.

Princess Leia’s reaction to the destruction of her home planet.

You’re all doing it wrong!

Seeing as the MG-B is the definitive classic car in the UK, I guess a classic car is a performance 2 seater that is orders of magnitude slower than a base model family 5 door of the same era.

Now, go!

He’s made a career out of being Ewan’s mate and seems devoid of any positive feature. Can’t stand watching his contrived shite.

I watched the Long Way Round, and started the Long Way Down, and they certainly gave the impression that Boorman was a get on with it kind of guy with some ability when it came to adventure motorcycling, and Ewan was a whiny precious little tit. Ewan was the other guy dragging along in Boorman’s wake trying to pretend he actually owned any balls.

Combinational awesomeness. Take several things, combine them, get awesome.
See also:

A German student “mooned” a group of Hell’s Angels and hurled a puppy at them before escaping on a stolen bulldozer, police have said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10333211

The TdF was completely clean until at least the 50’s. Everyone was doping, but it was allowed, so no crime there. Then there is a long hazy period of mostly ignoring it bleeding into criminalising it but with a sort of <nudge wink> “no, really, we’re serious, heheheh” attitude that gradually hardened. Not sure at what point doping being “banned” became actually really really banned though.

I think the watershed moment was when an American turned out to be the best at it. 😉

Mate: Noticed how the levers no longer really retract when you let go?

Not really, but I don’t let go that often… 😆

I thought I had Hayes..?

Any speed is too fast if you’re unable to stop safely.

Nonsense! If she is parked at the side of the road and he’s expected to leave room to stop in case she pulls out, he’d be obliged to roll to a stop before reaching her. 🙄

Grim Fandango.
Fantastic voice acting and dialogue, great story and characters, the brilliantly ridiculous “1 year later” transitions, especially Glotis’ pimping of the ship.

If there was a really really strong tail wind, blowing at about normal take-off speed for a given plane, could that stop the plane from taking off

As the plane’s ground speed would be double its airspeed, such a scenario could lead to it running out of runway before its air speed was high enough to take off. Otherwise, no.

cause it to fall out of the sky?

No.

Conversely, if there was a really really strong head wind, could a plane take off without moving (other than its elevons)?

Yes – if it ran its engine or was tethered.

My brakes are about 4 yrs old, and all I’ve done is replace the pads and clean them. But I REALLY clean them. Maybe I just have the reliable ones.

I’m always looking for any little advantage that would make my toe edge turns less terrifying!

Dunno what level yer at, but work on finishing your turns properly. Let yourself look up the slope to commit your body, rock onto the edge, crouch and ride it round – no kicking! So many people are looking down slope over their lead shoulder while kicking the tail round.

Disappointed that klumpy didn’t bite my trolling

Oh, yes right. Well, a wide duck footed stance is kind of “Tubby sweaty old lady struggling with shopping bags trying to get some air up her unmentionables” while a proper carving stance is a lot more “Swordman poised to strike”.

And riding switch is for when you bottled a turn due to very small testicles.

And we don’t want to be seen obviously going through exercises with you as that would implicitly associate us with your dreadful sallopettes. 😆

(those guys in the photo’s up there are too ‘open’ according to the NZSIA teaching criteria – they’d fail their NZSIA exam for that)

It’s not the way you’d teach beginners to ride, but they’re aping the setup and style of slalom racers – and I doubt any other group of people turns or carves better!

One of my instructors had various exercises involving riding switch for sections, or making every few turns a 360 spin so you swap between regular and switch. Good fun, useful, and thankfully the snow was soft. 😆

If carving is your thing, then you want a positive angle at both ends.

A few random points.

Access law is inside out, law should assume you can do anything unless told otherwise, not you can’t do anything unless told you can.

These “fragile” roads are 100s of years old and survived centuries of teams of horses pulling carts running on skinny wheels. The countryside is even older, and survived billions of years of weather.

The worst erosion a load of traffic going up a hill could create is a new combe. And we like combes!

Arcane historical rights should not make the bulk of the case for access. If it’s made of rocks feel free to drive your scud launcher up it. If it’s a peat bog containing the last mating pair of some newt, no-one is allowed on it. Time to tear up the map and do it right, and fairly.

There’s no point banning anything from a track that tractors still use.

Mountain bikes aren’t allowed everywhere because people agree it’s right, but because they can’t be stopped. If MTBs suddenly had number plates our world would crumble overnight.

All abandoned quarries should immediately become assumed multi-access. They’re already ‘ruined’, and are made of rocks!

Anyone with effective access to 150% of the official network (ie, all of it plus cheeky and trail centers) who moans about the presence of some who only ever used 5% needs psychiatric help.

And that lawn really needs sweeping

And that fence could do with sawing into planks, nailing up, and painting.

So, is that bike a “penny-penny”..?

IDEAS includes the phrase “Intelligent Design”. Expect calls from Texas!

Novatech do two levels of “bundles”. Buy a motherboard bundle and put it in your existing case, or buy a bare bones bundle and put your existing drives in it – depending on what you want to keep and your level of confidence re: diving into a computer up to the elbows.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/motherboardbundles/%5B/url%5D
http://www.novatech.co.uk/barebonebundles/%5B/url%5D

EDIT: I always seem to buy my computers from this lot, no matter where else I look. The bundles are tested, so you know they’ll boot and they are great way of getting a new computer without buying a new computer.

I simply couldn’t care really what sized wheels are on my bike(s). The wheel size is only one small part in the jigsaw as to how a bike (and rider) perform.

Amen! And on top of that ‘performance’ is only a small part of why some (most?) of us pick a bike. Making best time A to B offroad requires a cyclocross bike. Most *mountain biking* I see in the wilds of Quantox, Mendips, and Exmoor is about ‘riding up hills in order to ride down them’. People who do this choose the compromises between burly/climbing and efficient/fun that suits them – with the “winner” being (s)he with the biggest grin, even if five minutes slower!