Early Risers.

[jjb1970]

8 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Even disregarding the "on message" trend of disparaging anything and everything that Western European Civilization has accomplished since the Age of Enlightenment (something that has truly and thoroughly contaminated Academia and Curatorship in the US and UK), what has replaced "old fashioned" museum curation is so simplistic and dumbed down that the contents wouldn't even challenge a moderately bright 10-year old. I suspect, deep down, these "with it" and "on message" curators secretly despise the majority of museum goers, dismissing them as thickos...

 

Remember when museums, like the Maritime Museum and The Science Museum in London would challenge the visitor's intellect - encouraging people to go away and want to find out more???

 

 

I can't begin to convey how disappointed I was when I  visited the National Maritime Museum this year. As you say, ignore any arguments about attitudes to history and how it should be presented,  what disappointed me was the paucity of anything remotely interesting other than a still impressive art collection and how shallow it all was. I  used to love the ship models but I was in London for an IMO meeting and there's a much better collection of ship models in the IMO building (it really is a much better collection than what is on display at the NMM). Maybe I am not the right person to comment as I  have a slightly above average knowledge of shipping but those sections addressing maritime trade struck me as being pitched at primary school level. Making museums interesting to young children is commendable, but this should be complementary to more grown up exhibitions to educate secondary school level and above, including people in tertiary education and interested adults.

 

Another disappointment was the Imperial War Museum,  but that is saved by still having many interesting exhibits and the Holocaust gallery. Although even there, the fist Holocaust gallery which included a giant scale model of a train of victims arriving and being herded from the train to the camp was much more powerful and harder hitting.

[jjb1970]

Something I hate about some (but not all) state museums in Britain is the way they try and guilt trip people into making donations.

 

If they want to impose an entry fee then fine, I will happily pay. I have never objected to paying the entry fee to visit museums like Duxford, HMS Belfast, Brookland etc and if anything think there should be an entry price. I also have no objection to donation boxes, contact less donation touch pads, information on membership and donations etc. I think if I have been impressed by a Museum it is only right to make a donation, including pay to enter museums I value such as the tank museum or Carlisle Castle (not a Museum I suppose but same argument). But the practice of having a picket line of people asking for donations annoys me. My normal answer is I will make a donation when I leave. In fairness to both the National Maritime Museum and IWM neither has ever been guilty of that when I have visited. 

[Ozexpatriate]

9 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

The time zone thing is his major problem, especially when dealing with the USA who seem oblivious to such things, despite their own country having several.  Asia is never an issue, they respect working times elsewhere but the US drive him mad.

In my experience professionals in the US are very, very conscious of time zones. The problem is the overlaps. On the west coast if I want to speak to someone in Israel during working hours my options are Mon-Wed at 8:00am. That's it. 

 

If I want to speak with someone in China, there are zero options other than to stay at work until after 6:00pm, Mon-Thu.

 

Problems occur when you have to speak to Israel, the US west and China on the same call.  There will be a 'loser'.

 

India is a nightmare. They are 12:30 away from the US west coast. Someone is meeting late at night.

[Ozexpatriate]

9 hours ago, DaveF said:

I was reading recently we shouldn't eat beef because of the methane emissions.  In the same magazine I read that using cattle to graze on conservation land is good as the trampling and grass eating allows other plants and small animals to increase in numbers.

 

Now which is sensible or right?

Cattle for beef production are an environmental disaster. It's not just the methane belches. The water consumed per unit of mass of protein produced is extremely high compared with any other form of protein and vast amounts of land are required. The sustainability aspects of water are in many places more critically stretched than climate impacts.

 

With smaller scale production it's not an issue. Feeding beef to 8 billion people as their primary source of protein is a non-starter from a sustainability standpoint.

 

9 hours ago, DaveF said:

... using cattle to graze on conservation land is good as the trampling and grass eating allows other plants and small animals to increase in numbers.

This is gibberish. Leaving grassland in its natural state without grazing animals is "conservation". If you want trampling for some weird reason, sheep are much better at that than cattle. 

 

There's a reason a tamping roller is called a sheep's foot roller.

[Ozexpatriate]

9 hours ago, DaveF said:

I have never seen a house where there is never condensation in some weather.

I don't have any condensation. It does require permanently on extraction fans* to make sure it doesn't happen - the house is almost airtight.  I also religiously use extraction fans in the bathroom while I shower. This is effective.

 

* These are powered by hydroelectricity**, though I could deploy solar power.

 

** Fish-killing hydropower. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

 

When constructed, they pressurize the house and measure the rate of pressure loss to determine the energy rating.

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, Tony_S said:

Like this?

Actually an abbreviation of Lake Minnetonka - in @Ian Abel's neighbourhood.

 

I have boated upon it. (Can't say sailed. It was a motor boat, and a very nice afternoon.)

[Ozexpatriate]

13 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

I do think the Aviation Industry gets blamed unfairly for CO2 emissions. Creating more CO2 than aviation are such industries as energy (heating & lighting [electricity] generation), fashion (10% of annual carbon footprint), construction and agriculture.

Your diagram highlights the manufacture of cement at 5%. I usually see it at 8%. (Perhaps that is 8% of CO2?) It is more than 4x the total contribution of all aviation.

 

Concrete (in addition to the production of cement) is also very damaging to estuarine ecosystems - since that is where most of the sand comes from. Wind blown, fine sands (like the Sahara) are not suitable for making concrete. Grittier estuarine sand is preferred.

[Ozexpatriate]

5 hours ago, pH said:

Canada is preparing to revolutionize the world of soccer:

Did you see the recent video from a Lake Tahoe ski run?

 

"Missed it by that much Chief!"

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, The Lurker said:

... that is probably a little too political 

Ethical rather than political for most people.

 

11 hours ago, The Lurker said:

I think the biggest thing we could do for the planet is stop having so many children.

It's the fast track to macro-economic suicide for a nation state as China learned. Declining birthrate might be one of the biggest influences on why Japan - the economic powerhouse of the 1980s -  is reeling today.

 

An aging population with few young working 'producers' to support the costs of providing elder care is a force multiplier of economic decline for nation states.

 

So, turned it back into a political topic for you.

 

[Hroth]

7 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

So one of these is out of the question, then?

 

https://www.nisbets.co.uk/lightfry-air-fryer-lf12e/cj573

 

It’s basically a glorified and tweaked forced hot-air oven (as they are at all price levels)

 

Useful, but still not worth a damn if you want to make proper tempura, suppli, pakora, or even proper fish and chips - anything that is “wet” when it goes into the hot oil.

 

Still, it be useful to see how it would manage to cook a Panko breaded Tonkatsu.

 

Deffo..

 

What I did like was the site pop-up asking about cookies...

 

[iL Dottore]

9 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

.…..Another disappointment was the Imperial War Museum,  but that is saved by still having many interesting exhibits and the Holocaust gallery. Although even there, the first Holocaust gallery which included a giant scale model of a train of victims arriving and being herded from the train to the camp was much more powerful and harder hitting.

I think that that huge model of part of the selection ramp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was perhaps THE best encapsulation of what the “Final Solution” was all about: industrialised mass murder.

 

Focussing on individuals and their stories is all well and good, but learning that Mr Solomon, that nice Jewish tailor from Dusseldorf (or Krakow or Brussels or….) was rounded up, savagely beaten and then shot out of hand is terrible and tragic but doesn’t even begin to touch upon the horrific scale of what occurred.

 

Sadly, mass murder and genocide have always been part of human history, as has sad1sm and wanton cruelty (but so have acts of great kindness, bravery and selflessness). The Romans sometimes slaughtered every single living thing in villages and towns that opposed them, Genghis Khan (reportedly) made mountains out of his enemies skulls, the Armenians were essentially erased from existence and so on.

 

The true horror of the Holocaust was how, for the most part, impersonal it was. True, at the local level, there were acts of great cruelty and hatred (especially from those who allied themselves with the Nazi regime), but for the most part people were “just doing their jobs”, a horrible and terrible job certainly, but a “necessary one that had to be done for Germany” (a terrible mindset, but one that is still around today. As Terry Pratchett [and others] observed: it’s amazing how much evil can be wrought when you’re “doing good”).

 

For me, the true evil of the industrial mass murder of the Holocaust (and one that lives on, no matter the ideology behind it) was best shown in the media by the following:

• Conspiracy, a film about the Wannsee conference - where mass murder is discussed with the same dispassionate intensity as would be the case when discussing how to increase steel production. People reduced to interchangeable “units”.
• The scene from Schindler’s List, where lorries disgorge a team of SS clerks who set up portable tables with portable typewriters and clipboards with lists. If someone was on list A - they lived, if they were on list B, they died.
• (as stated above) the small scale (1/160?) model of part of the selection ramp of Auschwitz-Birkenau which was once displayed at the IWM. This tiny scale model with its thousand or so tiny figures and long train of cattle wagons is HUGE, but yet represents but a tiny part of the whole camp. A “Factory of Death”

The most horrible legacy of this period of history is how so many of the components of what became industrial mass murder have been adopted (and sometimes used) by governments and regimes around the world.

Edited December 14, 2023 by iL Dottore
I don't believe it, I re-read my post and they censored sad1sm" !??!

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl,

2 hours sleep, short awake. 4 hours sleep not enough.

 

Last night's MRC dinner was a tale of 3 halves..

 

Sit at appointed time for pre- chosen starters

They arrive 1/2 later...

Except... Those with chicken liver pate starter had been forgotten, they get theirs another 10 minutes later.

15 minutes later they clear plates,

Finish starter end of part 1,

 

3/4 hours later they serve main course, one person finds plastic in their meal. They bring out meals for the three people that had cancelled, even though they knew about the cancellations

Finish main courses end of part 2,

 

Bring out the dessert courses, reasonably promptly, again bringing out meals for the cancelled persons..

 

End of part 3...

Post match coffee and tea, They forget the cream for the coffees...

 

The food was actually cooked well and there were no complaints about that, but their timing and organisation was hopeless.

 

We eventually got home at 23:45, to a cross-legged Collie, Ben was happy at his little bit of Christmas dinner left overs, he'll get a bit more today.

 

Today , starts with taking the "Little Red Driving Machine" © Gwiwer to the MOT, it will be interesting to hear the results.

A visit to the post office after that to post some documents.

 

Plans after that are weather dependent variable,

Rain or ground too sticky more Ben's ramp work,

Otherwise. Digging.

Either will be followed by

Muddling.

 

Time I moved, as breaky must be had, before the car arrives at the garage before 09:00.

 

 

 

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

A zoom meeting beckons today.. pah!

 

I first attended an on line video meeting in the late 1990s. Problem has always been that some attendees deliberately hide.. and it's very difficult to check full body language. 

 

A question I ask of environmental campaigners is "what exactly do you do to help save the Planet?". Some of the results scare the living daylight out of me due to the negative affects on the environment.

 

Large sized (sometimes apprentice built) ship models are worth a lit of money. Vickers lost a very large model of HMS King George V .. insurance value (like for like replacement) .. £2.5m.

 

It was eventually located in a store room at Millbank .. and Vickers had lots of such models..

 

We haven't bought an air fryer yet.we have nowhere to put it!

 

Time to get up and get my self motivated for my meeting..

 

Stay safe!

 

More positive thoughts to all who are in pain 9r suffering.

 

Baz

[jamie92208]

Good moaning.  It's not raining which is a plus.  Breakfast had, sandwiches made.  First stop today is the garage to get the tracking done on the Volvo.  Then call at a distillery for essential supplies then on to Ruffec, some minor shopping, eat lunch then an afternoon trainspotting with Andy.  What a good day. 

 

Jamie

Edited December 14, 2023 by jamie92208

[polybear]

7 hours ago, pH said:

Canada is preparing to revolutionize the world of soccer:
 

 

You have been warned!

 

(Taken by my daughter-in-law in their back yard. Through a window, of course.)

 

 

 

Teddy...........

Sure beats Harry the Hedgehog......(who I suspect is now in snoozyland for the Winter as he's not visited for a while now).

 

30 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

For me, the true evil of the industrial mass murder of the Holocaust (and one that lives on, no matter the ideology behind it) was best shown in the media by the following:

 

The scene that always sticks in this Bear's mind is where the SS raid a Jewish Area one evening; a large Jewish family are all sitting down to dinner in an apartment when the SS burst in - the first they head for is the Grandfather(?), who's sitting in a wheelchair.  Two of the SS pick him up, still sat in the chair and tip him over the Balcony....

Not sure what film it's from though.

 

22 minutes ago, TheQ said:

The food was actually cooked well and there were no complaints about that,

 

Even the one with the plastic in?

[TheQ]

I had to attend zoom meetings at work.

Got requested to turn my camera on..

 

I was too junior to have a camera fitted to my PC..  i didn't push to hard to get one, In fact i made no effort at all.. i hated the meetings.

 

 

We too have nowhere to put an air fryer, neither worktop space nor storage space.

[TheQ]

Just now, polybear said:

 

 

 

Even the one with the plastic in?

Oh there was definitely complaint about that, and the tardy delivery, a discount was organised ..

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

Still quite dull out, it's raining and that is expected to continue throughout the morning.  It may brighten up later.  3°C now rising to a maximum of 8°C.

It's all happening here and it looks like being a busy day.

I was already up at 06.30 when my phone pinged with a link and map of the progress of our furniture delivery which is on its way.  We're 12th on the list and they expect to be here between 13.19 and 14.19.  

First of the three bin lorries has been and gone, Sainsbury's have got everything we ordered and I'm really looking forward to my visit to the dentist at 09.00.   What could possibly go wrong?   Don't answer,  the pessimist in me has already done that. 

Time to gettamoveon.

Have a good one,

Bob.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

I think that that huge model of part of the selection ramp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was perhaps THE best encapsulation of what the “Final Solution” was all about: industrialised mass murder.

 

Focussing on individuals and their stories is all well and good, but learning that Mr Solomon, that nice Jewish tailor from Dusseldorf (or Krakow or Brussels or….) was rounded up, savagely beaten and then shot out of hand is terrible and tragic but doesn’t even begin to touch upon the horrific scale of what occurred.

 

Sadly, mass murder and genocide have always been part of human history, as has and wanton cruelty (but so have acts of great kindness, bravery and selflessness). The Romans sometimes slaughtered every single living thing in villages and towns that opposed them, Genghis Khan (reportedly) made mountains out of his enemies skulls, the Armenians were essentially erased from existence and so on.

 

The true horror of the Holocaust was how, for the most part, impersonal it was. True, at the local level, there were acts of great cruelty and hatred (especially from those who allied themselves with the Nazi regime), but for the most part people were “just doing their jobs”, a horrible and terrible job certainly, but a “necessary one that had to be done for Germany” (a terrible mindset, but one that is still around today. As Terry Pratchett [and others] observed: it’s amazing how much evil can be wrought when you’re “doing good”).

 

For me, the true evil of the industrial mass murder of the Holocaust (and one that lives on, no matter the ideology behind it) was best shown in the media by the following:

• Conspiracy, a film about the Wannsee conference - where mass murder is discussed with the same dispassionate intensity as would be the case when discussing how to increase steel production. People reduced to interchangeable “units”.
• The scene from Schindler’s List, where lorries disgorge a team of SS clerks who set up portable tables with portable typewriters and clipboards with lists. If someone was on list A - they lived, if they were on list B, they died.
• (as stated above) the small scale (1/160?) model of part of the selection ramp of Auschwitz-Birkenau which was once displayed at the IWM. This tiny scale model with its thousand or so tiny figures and long train of cattle wagons is HUGE, but yet represents but a tiny part of the whole camp. A “Factory of Death”

The most horrible legacy of this period of history is how so many of the components of what became industrial mass murder have been adopted (and sometimes used) by governments and regimes around the world.

 

What is often Not Mentioned is the part that IBM played in the organisation of the Holocaust.

 

IBM Germany provided all the background accounting machinery that enabled the efficient administration of the Final Solution.  IBM USA continued to supply their German organisation with machinery, spares and other technical support until Germany declared war on the USA.  IBM Germany then carried on supplying accounting services until the end of the war.

 

There's a book about it.  IBM and the Holocaust   

 

 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Hroth
Updated reference

[Hroth]

Ding-D0ng!!!

 

My parcel of parallel pieces of nickel-silver arrived courtesy of Royal Mail at 8:27am, after passing through a "site" and two named facilities.

 

A good thing I was up and ready to face the day....

 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Hroth
I forgot that the Net Nanny dislikes the word d0ng and can't determine context...

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

It’s raining here too, pah! As it’s a Thursday, Sheila is busy getting herself ready for her Zumba class, so I’m sat in the dining room keeping out of the way. Once I’ve dropped Sheila off at the church hall, I’ll call at Sainsbury’s for some salad leaves and the Railway Modeller, then I’ll head back home to finish framing the print. As I’ve only got to fit the print and add a couple of eyes to the frame , this shouldn’t take long. After that I’ve got a visit to Costco on the cards and I’ll fill up the car whilst I’m there, ready for our trip to Preston on Sunday, when we’ll have dinner at James’ new house. 

Charlie isn’t calling round today as he’s having to work, extra shifts due to the time of year etc. 

 

Back later. 
 

Brian

[RobAllen]

Hoping to receive some point motors today. Ordered my first British Finescale point today which will hopefully arrive next week.

I seem to be doing things out of order!

[monkeysarefun]

The best night to see the Geminids here is tonight apparently.  Just need to go through the checklist to see if its a goer for me.

 

 

Cloudless sky:                                                             ✔️   Not a cloud to be seen.

Clear view to the northeast :                                     ✔️     Thanks to the tree that blew over a couple of weeks ago!

No background light interference:                          ✔️ Theres just an empty hillside which also blocks any  lights  behind it

Standing around outside Comfort level:                   ✔️  Forecast lowest overnight is a balmy 19 degrees

Lack of moonlight:                                                         ✔️    No moon tonight!

Work friendly observation hours:                              ❌    Scheduled start is 2:45AM

 

But  5 out of 6 aint bad!

[Hroth]

7 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

The best night to see the Geminids here is tonight apparently.  Just need to go through the checklist to see if its a goer for me.

 

 

Cloudless sky:                                                             ✔️   Not a cloud to be seen.

Clear view to the northeast :                                     ✔️     Thanks to the tree that blew over a couple of weeks ago!

No background light interference:                          ✔️ Theres just an empty hillside which also blocks any  lights  behind it

Standing around outside Comfort level:                   ✔️  Forecast lowest overnight is a balmy 19 degrees

Lack of moonlight:                                                         ✔️    No moon tonight!

Work friendly observation hours:                              ❌    Scheduled start is 2:45AM

 

But  5 out of 6 aint bad!

 

Looking at the weather, I'd fail at the first tickbox...

 

[jjb1970]

6 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

In my experience professionals in the US are very, very conscious of time zones. The problem is the overlaps. On the west coast if I want to speak to someone in Israel during working hours my options are Mon-Wed at 8:00am. That's it. 

 

If I want to speak with someone in China, there are zero options other than to stay at work until after 6:00pm, Mon-Thu.

 

Problems occur when you have to speak to Israel, the US west and China on the same call.  There will be a 'loser'.

 

India is a nightmare. They are 12:30 away from the US west coast. Someone is meeting late at night.

 

I find the problem region is Europe.

 

Many meetings are set up for European office hours for the entirely sensible reason that if you need people from the Americas and Asia/Pacific on the call then the time window is ideal for European people. That's just the way it is and it's not a problem.

 

What does annoy people is I find many in Europe expect to get the easy slot in calls with Asia or with people in the Americas. They especially take advantage of people in Japan as they know they won't complain (at least not much). I work for a US based organization so calls with Washington DC are almost every day, I also have regular calls with various other US based organizations and the convention is to take turns with the night slot, so everyone shares having an easy morning slot and a night time slot.