old man emu

A while ago I posted somewhere about the boom in the production of balsa. The demand is being created by China which used the balsa for the innards of wind turbine blades. The innards are covered with materials such as carbon fibre, and it is the carbon fibre that makes recycling difficult. I really don't know what they do with the recovered bala. Maybe there should be a revitalisation in the hobby of building flying aeroplane models from balsa.

You know that redundancy package Trump is offering Federal employees if the quit? He says he'll pay them until September. Well.......................... Remember the fight late last year to have the US budget approved? It was. The money was promised until March. But ..... what was passed did not make any mention of money for the redundancy payments Trump offered. So there is no money from now until March for anyone who quits. Next, a new budget will have to be passed to carry on government after March. Do you really think that the Doge of Washington will let that sort of money be paid out? Trump is simply setting up another swindle. Remember that he is a past master of not paying what he owes. PS: "Doge" originally a title for a ruler. The Doge of Venice was the highest role of authority within the Republic of Venice (697 CE to 1797 CE). The Doge of Venice acted as both the head of state and head of the Venetian oligarchy. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

The Ford Pilot was a product of its time, but in that time, crash survivability was a matter of sheer luck. Of cause the Pilot would mangle an Austin or a Morris in a prang, just because of its greater mass, and greater rigidity. But lack of seat belts, rigid steering column, unpadded dashboard and rigid chassis all contribute to passenger injury. Our modern cars might be a write-off in a relatively less serious prang, but the occupants can get out and walk around to survey the damage.

You are correct about batteries being an essential component of the power supply system. Once we conquer the problems currently associated with them (real and imagined) they will greatly reduce the need for other non-renewable generation methods. However, I feel that we should also adopt a belt 'n' braces approach and keep some old style generating system in play for backup. What annoys me about the whole global warming thing is the way protagonists accuse those living in the Southern Hemisphere os being as blameworthy as those in the Northern Hemisphere when southerners do not put anywhere near the actual amount of bad stuff into the atmosphere.

ENOUGH!!! Prove that statement or delete it.

Compare one of today's light passenger vehicles with a VW, or any other car of the same era, and you will wonder how we survived. Well, a lot didn't. I wouldn't send my grandson out on the public streets in the sort of car I first drove, unless he was participating in a parade of historic vehicles.

What your questions indicate are the symptoms of poor management. The first thing I would look at is the constitution, or similar legal document, that sets out how the organisation is going to be managed. If there is one, is it being followed? Who has the authority to direct the operations - not the employed managers. Who bears responsibility for the operations an a committee level? Is there a Treasurer to oversee the finances. Is there an independent auditor to see that financial records are in order? The answers to these questions, most probably is "Yes", but you've got to ask them before you go into detailed questioning. I see nothing amiss in the questions you have identified, but I would fact-check the information that has given rise to the questions. Anecdotal material is to easily dismissed. Get information on paper because such information is your ammunition.

The difference between Trump and Putin? You can put more trust in what Putin says than you can Trump.

We'd be mugs if we put all our electricity generation eggs in one basket. We should make use of what has proven to be able to produce electricity - solar, wind, gas/coal. Australia is lucky in that it has the open spaces on which to erect solar arrays. More so, in urban areas where most of the electricity is going to be used, there are hectares of roof space. I see the solution as a divide between those two. I'm not overly keen on wind generation, which seems to be overly expensive to set up the generators. Even when commissioned, not all the generators in a unit are working at the same time. The question of transmission lines baffles me. We already have power grids covering a high percentage of users. What prevents the wire carrying the output from a renewable generation site from being connected to an already existing transmission line?

Go to any food court in a shopping centre and you'll be lucky to find a pie-eater. They are always available, but most people will be eating a kebab, Indian or Chinese. Should we lament the demise of pies? I don't think so. If I'm correct, pies (and pasties) are British foods. That's where we got the tradition of eating them. But since we opened our gates to all-comers, the basic foods in Australia have evolved as the culture has evolved. In the 21st Century, we should consider ourselves the "New Australians", who have evolved from the Anglo-Irish "Old Australians" through cultural cross-breeding.

I wouldn't worry if I was you. In South West Sydney there are new suburbs which are being referred to as Mumbai or Kolkata because there are so many Indians living there. At the end of June 2022, 753,520 Indian-born people were living in Australia, more than twice the number (355,380) at 30 June 2012. After the United Kingdom, the Indian-born population is the second largest migrant community in Australia, equivalent to 9.8 per cent of Australia's overseas-born population and 2.9 per cent of Australia's total population.

Contact your bank. They will have a fraud unit to look into it.

I posted that video simply to show the London bus on a skid pan, which is something you mentioned. Of course there are many more skills a bus driver needs to learn before setting out to drive the public.

It will be interesting to see if it is Trump or Musk who is Time's "Person of the Year" for 2025. It seems that the criterion for the selection is the perceived historical significance of the nominee. These two certainly meet that criterion. Most choices for "Person of the Year" have been historically important individuals, many of them infamous rather than internationally popular (Adolf Hitler was 1938's "Man of the Year", Stalin, 1939 and 1942, and Ayatollah Khomeini won in 1979).

That's a tariffic loss!

The Great Debate offering reads like an article in a popular aviation model. Quite pleasant to read. I like the humorous asides. I'm reading some short stories by P G Wodehouse at the moment. I wonder what AI would produce if asked to tell a story in his style.

Not on my watch, I won't!

Nah, That was just cheeky banter. No offence detected.

Short or long, it was wrong. Yes, no and maybe. We have to differentiate between the process of slowing the rotation of the wheel, and the effect of that slowing on the deceleration of the vehicle. The function of an ABS system is to control the rotation of the wheel assembly in order to allow the tyre to develop an amount of sideways force which is the force that results in steering. If the wheel assemblies of a moving vehicle stop rotating, the tyres will slide on the surface. A sliding tyre cannot produce any steering force. In fact, if you are in brake lockup, it is possible to turn the steering wheel from left to right and back without causing the vehicle to change direction. An ABS system is designed to release the hydraulic pressure being applied to the brake cylinders before the pressure reaches a point where the rotation of the wheel stops. The system is also designed to return the pressure thereafter so that the critical point is reached. Then the cycle begins again. That is why, if you stand on the brake pedal and keep standing on it, you will feel a rapid shuddering of the pedal as the pressure changes up and down rapidly.

GON, there's an old saying, 'a cobbler should stick to his last'. It warns against involving oneself in areas that one lacks knowledge or experience. No it wasn't. It is designed to allow the braking system to slow the rotation of the wheel until the point of lockup, after which the tyre will slide on the surface. By allowing some rotation in the wheel. there is some tyre/surface friction remaining to allow the tyre to create a steering force, thus the vehicle can be steered, which is not possible if the tyres are sliding on the surface. The composition of tyres does affect the tyre/surface coefficient of friction. Harder compounds lead to lower coefficients. That's why the tyres used for racing are "softer" than regular passenger car tyres. Since ABS deals with brake application, the hardness of the tyres is not a factor in its effects.

With respect to the rest of those of the fair-haired feminine persuasion, Leavitt is the epitome of a dumb blonde.

You keep pitchin' and I'll keep hittin'.

And there is the flaw in your flawless argument. The coefficient of friction between a tyre and a road surface is not consistent. By that I mean sections of road surface of the same construction can have different coefficients of friction due to the amount of other material on the surface such as dust, oils, water etc. The onboard computer of a car would not know what that coefficient would be at any instant, so it could not calculate a braking distance.

Santorini's eruption did create a massive tsunami. Some think that the tsunami was the source for the Noah story, but that story has its origins in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia. ("Mesopotamia" comes from the ancient Greek words mesos ("middle") and potamos ("river"). It literally translates to "land between the rivers". )