Political Forum Chat Thread.

It's certainly not legal for them to do it. But no one saw a thing. I know for sure that I didn't.

I'm reminded of an incident in a bar in the town where I lived in the US. A guy burst in brandishing a gun shouting who was sleeping with his wife. When the police arrived they had to open the door and windows to clear the gun smoke and they found a body shot 28 times and they found his gun. No other guns were found and not a single witness saw how he was shot. They apparently had all ducked under tables. Which begs for me to post this video

 

I've recently coordinated that my ashes will be encased in an artificial coral structure. It will be submerged in the sea, with the coordinates provided for anyone interested in 'visiting' in the future. In time, it will be a wonderful place for fish and other sea life.

 

Do not burn your bridges, be respectful when you leave a group and remember the internet is all about control. I know a few boards, but I want to make sure if I recommend them to you that you will be a good member. I speak from experience. I wasn't always nice when I posted in the forums, but things change and my opinion and yours matter less to me now. What I have came to understand is that, we are less our differences and more the subtle kind simple things we can share with others that give them a smile or raise their awareness.

 

Nice idea and far more worthy than my self-indulgent spectacle with limited fertilising effects on my favourite meadow.
My other option would be to do what I did with my beloved cat Boudica, which would involve being buried deep and planting an oak sapling above which could make use of the slow release nutrients from my rotting corpse.
I think my friends would get a lot of enjoyment from the trebuchet option though and it would be a good way of turning a sombre event into a happy memory.

 

So, my 10 day juggling festival started yesterday.
All in virtual reality. We've got our own website complete with multiple video chat rooms.
It's actually working really well. It's nice to sit and chat with old mates.
Some of had a game of online poker tonight while conferencing in a chat room whilst another group got together to watch Eurovision.
This would have been our 21st year this year. Many of us have known each other for 25-30 years now. We've grown old together.
Hopefully, we'll be able to do it for real next year...

 

So, video yet?

 

Video of the festival?
No, we're all just sitting in our homes pretending to be at the festival so there's not much to see except a load of people chatting to each other.
Here's a link to our 10th convention back in '09 though if you want to see what it's normally like.
http://juggling.tv/2366

That's me at about 4.50 mins doing my unique 3 basketball trick and pulling my ''I'm really concentrating'' face

 

Yep, saw that. I thought you might be doing your routines.

 

Some of the keener jugglers might show off some of their new tricks but it's all live video conferencing so nothing is getting recorded.
I live at the farm we hold it at so I'm the only one actually here.
One legend has put her tent up in the garden and is sleeping in it all week for added effect.

 

We were threshing today so I livestreamed a couple of hours of that to help people get in the mood.

 

Cool!

Hey, when you put the ball on the top of the stick, the ball seems to be moving as if rolling and not spinning [the direction of rotation]. Is that an illusion or does the ball spin vertically while on the stick?

 

The threshing should help. Love that threshing.

 

Must be an optical illusion, it is spinning on a vertical axis with the ''South pole'' placed on the point of the stick. The balance only lasts as long as the ball spins so it's not really a true balance but a gyroscopically aided one.

 

We're down to the last 6 tons or so of last year's harvest so a couple more days work should just about finish it. In a couple of month's time we harvest this year's wheat and start all over again.
Harvesting old style like we have to for the thatching straw means walking behind the binder and stacking the sheaths by hand to dry out in the sun.
It looks very pretty though and is a technique that goes back as far in time as farming itself.

 

Our binder looks someting like this and is also an antique. In fact I think it may even have been horse drawn originally but adapted to work behind a tractor.

 

Are they stooks?

 

In the local Suffolk dialect, they are called shooks but sheaths is the more common term. Stooks may be the Australian word for it.

Edit;

So you are right, a stook is several shooks/sheaths stood upright.
I'll find out what the local word is next time I see Farmer Paul.

 

Threshing is known as thrashing in Suffolk and troshing in Norfolk.

 

I read it somewhere- ? Hardy. I don’t think we have them here.

 

You only need to do it like that if you want to keep the straw undamaged for use in thatching. If you have no tradition of thatched roofs there you would have abandoned the practise when combine harvesters became widespread. Before combines, everyone would have done it like that and harvesting and threshing would have been separate activities like they are here. A combine harvests and threshes at the same time but it mangles the straw in tight bales rather than loose bunches making it useless for roofing.

 

I’ve never seen a thatched roof here so that would be why.
Interesting that thatching persisted despite the increased use of combine harvesters.

I was talking to my neighbour this morning about his car which had come home on a tow truck.
Many cars here are fuelled with LPG ( liquid petroleum gas). He had not noticed that his radiator coolant level had dropped.
The gas is kept liquid by the radiator coolant somehow and because the coolant had dropped, the gas froze, thereby causing his car to leap and splutter alarmingly.
He was telling me that LPG is not as popular as it was because it isn’t cheap fuel anymore and hybrids are becoming more popular. It will become scarcer and then perhaps no more.
Car design is evolving away from the ICE.

 

I don't think your neighbour is a mechanic. The LPG is kept liquid by being pressurised in the tank, the same as it is in propane bottles, and it becomes a gas as it is released into the carburetter. The LPG system is not linked to the engine coolant at all.
If his car was spluttering it was more likely that it was starting to seize because it was overheating.
LPG is very popular over in Europe but not so widespread here in the UK despite it being half the price and almost emission-free (just CO2 and H2O). The money-conscious tend to drive diesels here and LPG is only really used on cars with big petrol engines such as V8 Range Rovers.
My second ever car was an imported, left hand drive Peugeot from Belgium which had an LPG conversion. Back then (in the 1980's) LPG was really quite rare in service stations so it took a long time to catch on over here.

 

It wasn't combine harvesters that killed off the widespread use of thatch as a roofing material. It was the industrial revolution and mechanised transport. Once we moved past horse-drawn transport it became cost-effective to use slate brought from Wales by train or ceramic tiles made in large kilns in the big cities.
Before that tiles would have had to be produced in kilns on-site as they were when castles were built and slate was only used where it was locally available.
Straw on the other hand was widely available and very cheap as it had few other uses apart from bedding material for livestock. Your straw, therefore, could be brought very short distances to where your house was being built on a horse-drawn cart.

 

Sorry,I didn’t explain it well.
“The usual reason for a converter freezing up is low coolant level, especially if the converter is mounted high in the engine bay. Once it freezes up you may have to wait a bit longer for the internals to thaw before water flow resumes, check coolant level and purge any air lock from the system.Aug 12, 2004“

lpg converter freezing up | Ford Forums

 

Wouldn’t slate or tiles cost a lot more than thatch?