The Random thought thread

[Jerry_Atrick]

I should have said the word Felon is not used in common parlance.. Even when I did my law degree here, the term felon never came up to descriobe criminals convicted of indictable offences. Nor did I rtecall the term when doing evidence and sentencing.

 

Whenever the discussions around Aussies comes up, convicts is the preferred barb of choice.

 

It may well be used in certain sections of society, but it is not (or at least no  longer) a [common] British term. It is, of course an English word.

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Jerry_Atrick

[Jerry_Atrick]

One of the things that realluy annoys me are insects and spiders in the house. I know it is impossible to teek the critters out and I am not sure liberal use of Baygon is particuarly good for one's health. So I was thinking of, when building a house and the frame is up, installing a wrap-around super fine mesh/insect screen around the whole house, and then puttting the bricks up on the outside, and the pasterboaprd on the inside (walls ans ceiling). If course, the windows would have flyscreens fine enough to keep the spiders out, and then when opening and closign doors, there would be a window iof opportunity for the critters to get in, but it *should* keep most out...

 

a) Am aI being too paranoid? And b) Would it even come close to keeping all but the most determined critters out?

 

 

[onetrack]

In my long lifetime, I've found it is utterly impossible to keep insects and spiders out of houses - no matter how "insect proof" you make your habitation.

They can get through the smallest openings, and will continually look for openings that they can access - because they have nothing else to do but find good places to hide and source food they like. 

Spiders can flatten themselves into unbelievably thin profiles to squeeze through narrow gaps in doors. Insects are opportunists that can afford to wait until an opening appears - usually when a human makes a mistake and presents an opening for them.

 

We have tiny spiders here, they must be no more than about 2mm in body diameter, and they hide inside clothes pegs - then make their way onto clothing when it's brought in off the line.

Half the time they'll bite you when you put the clothing on - and the other half of the time, they'll climb off the clothing and find a spot to park, and spin a tiny web. And the buggers have a nasty little bite.

SWMBO is allergic to bites of any kind, from sandflies to mozzies to spiders, and she comes up in lumps and rashes and itchy spots on a regular basis - most of the time, not even knowing what bit her.

 

I fix these little buggers up by dropping the clothes pegs into very hot water, as often as I think of it - but they still make a nuisance of themselves. They walk straight through door and window gaps.

 

Huntsman spiders are also excellent at flattening themselves right out to squeeze through tiny cracks. I don't mind Huntsmans in the house, but they can freak you out when they suddenly appear, or run like lightning from some spot where you disturbed them. I generally pick them up with an upended glass and a sheet of paper, and take them outside again.

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by onetrack

[willedoo]

32 minutes ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

One of the things that realluy annoys me are insects and spiders in the house. I know it is impossible to teek the critters out and I am not sure liberal use of Baygon is particuarly good for one's health. So I was thinking of, when building a house and the frame is up, installing a wrap-around super fine mesh/insect screen around the whole house, and then puttting the bricks up on the outside, and the pasterboaprd on the inside (walls ans ceiling). If course, the windows would have flyscreens fine enough to keep the spiders out, and then when opening and closign doors, there would be a window iof opportunity for the critters to get in, but it *should* keep most out...

 

a) Am aI being too paranoid? And b) Would it even come close to keeping all but the most determined critters out?

 

 

Jerry, you already have the vapour barrier between the outside of the wall frame and the brickwork. Sisalation, sarking, it goes by different names.

Edited September 24, 2023 by willedoo

[old man emu]

9 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

It is, of course an English word.

Mais non, mon ami. Le mot est français. C'est du vieux Normand, felon "evil-doer, scoundrel, traitor, rebel, oath-breaker, the Devil" (9c.) Also by c. 1300 English in a general legal sense "criminal; one who has committed a felony," however the term is not applicable after legal punishment has been completed. So once a person's sentence was completed, they were no longer a felon. However, "convict", a person proved or found guilty of an alleged offence, is a permanent epithet. Australian official James Mudie (1837), coined felonry "as the appellative of an order or class of persons in New South Wales,—an order which happily exists in no other country in the world." Mudie was an r-sole https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mudie-james-2487

 

The word has a most interesting other possible source. Another theory traces it to Latin fellare "to suck", which had an obscene secondary meaning in classical Latin (well-known to readers of Martial and Catullus), which would make a felon etymologically a "cock-sucker." 

[nomadpete]

Nah.

It IS English.

 

If it's in the English dictionary,  it's English.

 

End of debate.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I clicked informative as I am too embarressed to admit I was confsed 😉

 

[nomadpete]

"Confsed"

 

Well, like "felon", the word "confused" has French roots (and we all know the French fame in THAT skill).

 

"The Latin past participle also was used as an adjective, with reference to mental states, "troubled, embarrassed," and this passed into Old French as confus "dejected, downcast, undone, defeated, discomfited in mind or feeling," which passed to Middle English as confus"

 

And that is as close as I can get to "confsed".

 

Care to clarify for OME, Jerry?

[Jerry_Atrick]

(I am giving up typing!)

[nomadpete]

It's time to enable voice recognition Jerry.

[spacesailor]

Scots for England .

After all , we use the " Scot's " Christian bible .

How many English languages were there in ' old ' pre-Roman England , with it' s five Kingdoms .

If only those ' massacred Scot's ' had WON their last battle,  how history would have been changed !  .

spacesailor

 

[willedoo]

2 hours ago, spacesailor said:

How many English languages were there in ' old ' pre-Roman England , with it' s five Kingdoms .

spacey, they were British languages, there's no such thing as pre-Roman England. But I know what you mean. A lot of us often use the word England as a generic term for Britain.

[onetrack]

The place was called "Albion" in pre-Roman times.

[facthunter]

THEY built diesel trucks." AS sure as the Sunrise".   Nev

[onetrack]

But the Albion truck was Scottish!!

[willedoo]

15 minutes ago, onetrack said:

The place was called "Albion" in pre-Roman times.

It must have moved to Brisbane after the Romans invaded. It's now just north of the Breakfast Creek Hotel.

[old man emu]

16 minutes ago, onetrack said:

The place was called "Albion" in pre-Roman times.

I think my Google Translate is broken. I wanted teh translation to French of "Britain" and it came back with Grande-Bretagne. I always thought the French for "Britain" was  la perfide Albion

[willedoo]

This is the vintage of Albion that I remember. Late 60's/early 70's maybe.

 

[facthunter]

The ones I worked on were much older with a bolted on   cast alloy top radiator tank with the Sunburst cast into it.  There's probably some place near London called Albion. The french name for England is Angleterre. Land of the Angles. Long straight noses.  Nev

[willedoo]

I'm currently doing a small renovation at home and haven't done much building for a while. I've really noticed some differences in products available and especially the price increases. I can remember once buying sheets of bracing ply for around $15 and about 18 months ago paid $30. That same sheet now is around $50.

 

Another one is brushable hydroseal. I found an old half full tin in the shed that I probably bought 20 years ago. If I'd known the cost of a four litre tin now is over $180, I wouldn't have splashed it around so much and saved it for critical ground or damp contact uses. I used it all up before I found out about the price. That's the original oil based, turps clean up stuff.

 

Most products on the market now that have replaced it are water based bitumen sealants. That weirds me out a bit as bitumen and water normally don't mix very well. The new water based stuff looks like gluggy cr*p in the tin, but seems to dry very similar to the oil based version. Brushes can be cleaned in water. Any that gets on the hands if you're not wearing gloves can be cleaned off with water if it's done straight away. If it dries on your hands, it needs turps or petrol to get rid of it, just like the oil based sealer. That's the weird part; water clean up if fresh, turps clean up if dry. There must be some clever industrial chemists out there.

[spacesailor]

DO NOT ! 

USE SOLVENTS for cleaning skin .

It let's the nasties get deeper into the  ' subcutaneous dermis .

Use any hand cream , it gathers the harmful ingredients up , to be washed away .

( even soft epoxy ).

One dose of " Dermatitis " will make you SHOUT it at your friends. 

spacesailor

[Marty_d]

Englaland was only a single country in  the 900's - before it was Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria and somewhere else.   As any reader/watcher of the Last Kingdom series (Bernard Cornwell) would know...

[Jerry_Atrick]

Middlesex, Essex, Carlilse, and most of tthe counties, although Avon apparently is no longer a county (Stratford Upon Avon is on the Avon river)

 

[nomadpete]

All that talk about sex- why did the frogs end up with the reputation for it?

[pmccarthy]

Avon means river in the old language. Middlesex was probably a haven for transsexuals.