The Random thought thread

[onetrack]

I blame the French for everything, especially anything to do with their odd, mangled-pronunciations language - large amounts of which have found their way into modern English, to confuse all those from non-English-speaking countries, who want to learn English. The strange part to me, is how English has become the primary language of technology, science, engineering, and even aviation. 

 

Anthropologists are always seeking to discover the exact point where language was invented (as it's presumed that sign language and grunts, and other animal-like sounds were humans only communication method, prior to that point of "inventing language").

I personally think they're going to keep doing a lot of guessing, as there is practically zero evidence available to determine when language was first developed and used. I suspect it was developed over a very long period of time, with a lot of trial and error and confusion.

[facthunter]

Latin is/was rather clever.   Nev

[red750]

And the amazing thing is that all this, every book, song, poem etc., is made up from only 26 letters in the alphabet.

[pmccarthy]

Then is queer another name for a choirboy?

[onetrack]

No, that's the priests in charge of the choir. How did you expect those boys to reach those high notes, without being grabbed by the nuts?

[willedoo]

I was listening to a talkback segment on the ABC radio tonight and the publican from Eulo rang in. He was on his way back home from Roma and mentioned that when he bought the car in Roma, the dealers offered a free 1,000 kilometre checkup. That's about 60 k's short of the distance to drive it home from Roma to Eulo and turn around and drive straight back to Roma.

Edited Monday at 10:15 AM by willedoo

[red750]

Today, Australia's population clicked over 28,000,000 today.

[onetrack]

I was reading an article about "Libyan desert glass" today, and how the scientists are totally perplexed on how it formed. It is primarily silicon, but it contains microscopic zircon crystals - and it has been fused at temperatures unlike anything ever found on Earth - even in molten magma.

The general opinion is that it formed in a meteorite burst over Libya in antiquity - but the scientists still say that doesn't fully explain the intricate atomic patterns found inside the glass.

More recent scientific studies say the Libyan desert glass was formed via a massive asteroid impact. But the problem with that line of investigation is - there is no impact crater anywhere near the Libyan desert, capable of supporting that story. The experts claim the crater is depply buried under the desert sands and needs more investigative work to find it.

 

In the article, they showed the Winged Scarab Pendant found in King Tut's tomb. It contains Libyan Desert Glass amongst the inlaid gemstones. Now, just looking at the close up of the pendant, I'm blown away by the skills, the complexity and the workmanship in this pendant. The experts say the ancient Egyptians were a race of primitive idol-worshippers who somehow managed some impressive building feats such as the Pyramids, using primitive transport methods.

 

They had no electricity, no high-tech steels, only wood-fired furnaces, no modern grinding equipment, and supposedly just primitive hand tools. I call BS on those suppositions - these people were an advanced race with skills and equipment equalling modern techniques.

It takes over 1000°C to melt gold, and intricate, high-tech tools to work it - to cut gemstones - and it takes artisans of exceptional skill to cut and shape those stones and fabricate the precious metals into shape. Take a close look at this pendant, you can expand the photo substantially to see the detail. 

 

https://egypt-museum.com/winged-scarab-pendant-of-tutankhamun/

 

Edited Tuesday at 10:29 AM by onetrack

[pmccarthy]

New research also shows that they were making complex copper alloys, deliberately adding trace elements to adjust the properties such as strength and hardness.

[willedoo]

It would be nice to have heaps of spare cash to throw around as there's some bargains out there. This Massey came up today on marketplace for $5,000. There's way more than that in scrap price - heaps of steel, shafts, pulleys, hydraulic rams and pumps, gears etc.. On top of that it's got a V8 Perkins diesel with 3,000 hours on the clock. Naturally the catch is the transport cost to move it anywhere.

 

[onetrack]

Old headers are a "dime a dozen" Willie. I saw two New Holland TR85 headers go for $3000 each earlier this year, they had Cat 3208 V8's in them, and had only done 4000 and 5000 hours.

They were in perfect working order, just essentially obsolete, as the new headers are 3 times the size, and pull the grain in, 4 times as fast.

 

I was watching a video late last year of new New Holland header with a 60 foot front, it was ripping off barley at the rate of 80 tonnes an hour. The old fellas eyes would be like saucers if they were around to see this.

 

Some of the times, two double trailer roadtrains can't keep up with hauling the grain away. Some of the mobile field bins ("mother bins") are now up to 200 and 300 tonnes.

[willedoo]

It must be this one here:

 

 

[onetrack]

Yeah, that's the beast - and the video below is the one I saw last year. Watch for the screen readout in the cabin, about 13 secs in from the start.

 

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1499670794616183

 

Edited yesterday at 01:52 PM by onetrack

[pmccarthy]

There is a type of soft rubbery material that reverts to black crude oil over time and blackens your hand. I threw out a set of screwdrivers like that. Yesterday I spent a few hours replacing the foam surrounds around the speaker cones in my 30-year-old stereo, which had turned to black grease. And I have a pair of binoculars that have gone like that, I am reluctant to throw them out but they are black and sticky.

[onetrack]

I bought 3 pairs of Dunlop steel-toe workboots in the mid-1990's, because they were going out cheap. I didn't need them immediately, but I thought I'd "stock up" for when I did need them.

 

I never even got to wear them. Within about 18 mths, the rubberised soles had turned into a gooey globby mess, that just fell off the uppers.

So I ended up with a set of 3 perfect leather uppers with no soles. I kept those new uppers for ages, thinking I might be able to organise new soles of some type for them.

 

No bootmaker would even look at them, so the uppers laid around my workshop for years, until I was evicted from it, ahead of workshop demolition, in early 2024.

So they went in the bin, in the huge cleanup associated with the move out of the workshop. What a bloody waste. I know now, why they were going out cheap.

 

Dunlop carried out some disastrous product moves in that era, and it still dogs them today. No Dunlop tyre I have ever bought, or acquired, has reached its full life without carcass separation, or just blowing out.

I just disposed of the last of 4 Dunlops I acquired on 4 wheels I bought to fit my Hilux about 3 years ago. They were almost new when I acquired them.

One separated within about 3 mths, another separated about 6 mths later, and the third separated about 6 mths after that. They just went completely out of round, developing huge carcass distortion.

The last one nearly wore out, but the tread started coming off on the inside, and that scared me a bit, because it was on a front wheel. So I ditched it for a new Bridgestone A/T697 Dueler.

 

I haven't actually bought any new Dunlops for about 40 years, I refuse to buy them. But I keep "inheriting" the darn things when they come on vehicles or wheels that I buy. They are total rubbish.

[willedoo]

I once bought a pair of Mack branded lace ups. I don't know if they still make them, but at the time Mack and Cat branded boots were getting about. They had the gel implant in the heel for cushioning like a lot of modern workboots have. At the time we had a yard at Moomba and we left our gear there to go home for the Christmas break. I thought I'd be clever and leave some personal gear in one of the dongas to save carting it back and forth on the plane. When I got back early in January, the heels on the boots had exploded and blown the guts out of the heels where the gel bags would have been. Too much heat I figured; it would have been up in the 60's most likely inside the donga without the aircon on. They were expensive boots and nearly new but you couldn't wear them; it was like trying to drive with flat tyres.

[onetrack]

So, I wonder how they would've performed walking on hot ground during Summer? Bitumen can get up to 70°C in Summer, and ordinary rocky clayey ground generally isn't far behind, temperature-wise.

[willedoo]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

So, I wonder how they would've performed walking on hot ground during Summer? Bitumen can get up to 70°C in Summer, and ordinary rocky clayey ground generally isn't far behind, temperature-wise.

Good point. Normally I'd spend most of the day in air con, but for some people they'd be on their feet on the hot ground all day. I hope they had better boots than the Mack ones.

[nomadpete]

Random history borrowed from another thread.....

 

25 years ago today, a big clash of the superpowers - the “Hainan Island Incident”, which is described in a book “Pacific”, by Simon Winchester.
 

Hainan Island incident - Wikipedia

 

en.wikipedia.org

U.S. intelligence gathering plane operating in the South China Sea, whose air and water China considers its territory, the U.S. not so much. Chinese jet, flown by Lt. Cdr. Wang Wei -who had intercepted US planes before, getting close enough to display his email address on a paper sign through the cockpit- gets a bit too close this time and collides with the U.S. plane. Wang’s plane is heavily damaged, goes out of control, he ejects, parachute malfunctions, he disappears into the sea. The U.S. plane, with 23 aboard, heavily damaged but still flying, makes an emergency landing without Chinese permission (none of their distress calls had been responded to by the Chinese) at a sensitive military base on large Hainan Island (which is a long time target of US spying) on the SE coast of China, surrounded by armed troops upon arrival, who force their way into the plane. (Plane was later retuned to the U.S. , dismantled in wooden boxes, on a Russian cargo plane.) What was going through their minds….

“For the next 26 minutes, the crew of the EP-3 [US plane, after it was stabilized following a big rapid descent after the collision] performed an emergency plan which included destroying sensitive items aboard the aircraft, such as electronic equipment related to intelligence-gathering, documents and data. Part of this plan involved pouring freshly brewed coffee into disk drives and motherboards and using an axe from the plane's survival kit to destroy hard drives.[15] The crew had not been formally trained on how to destroy sensitive documents and equipment, and so improvised. As a result of the destruction, the plane's interior was later described as resembling "the aftermath of a frat party".[12]

The air crew was interrogated and held for over a week, diplomatic crisis, etc etc. Among other things China learned from the plane in its possession —although the crew destroyed a lot of info and spying equipment aboard - including after landing while Chinese troops banged on the windows and shouted at them with bullhorns to come out— China learned that the U.S. could track its submarines via signals intelligence. The end was a letter, or letters, “the two sorries”, issued that allowed each country to save face.

25 years ago today (Bush’s first foreign policy crisis.) Could’ve been a lot worse. Let’s avoid this kinda stuff in future, shall we? Air and sea patrols have continued since then, but US crafts have learned to be much more careful since.

Imagine if this incident had occurred while Trumpster was *resident…