Early Risers.

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, BlackRat said:

Anyone know a good paddle maker?

Why yes, as it happens.  

[Ozexpatriate]

12 hours ago, TheQ said:

it was a flood plain then people built houses on it, not thinking it could be again

There are flood plains and there are flood plains.

 

I live at the north end of the Willamette Valley. This was flooded (multiple times) during the "Missoula Floods" leaving a thick layer of clay deposits and is undeniably a 'flood plain'. The valley floor is quite flat as a result. Will these floods return? Not in my lifetime

 

If you checked the link you'll find the Missoula Floods occurred between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago during deglaciation at the end of an ice age as ice dams ~700km away broke.

 

There is plenty of opportunity for localized flooding close to the present rivers but the biggest material natural danger I am likely to face is an earthquake, or more remotely wildfire.

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, polybear said:

Yes, I'm talkin' about companies like you, Amazon.  And if the US Gov doesn't like that idea, tuff sh1t.

What makes you think the Federal Government of the US would care one way or another if Amazon was required to pay taxes on profits earned in the UK? There are plenty of people in this country who would be happy for them to pay taxes here too.

 

(The US corporate tax rate is 21%. In 2021, Amazon's "effective" tax rate was 6.1%.)

 

Unless they are behaving illegally, companies are required to pay the taxes ordained by local taxation legislation. Unless there is evidence of illegal tax evasion, complaints about companies not paying corporate tax should be directed to the legislators who create corporate tax legislation.

 

You'll find plenty of legislators creating "pro-business" tax law along the lines of so-called "trickle-down/voodoo economics". Since we don't discuss politics, I won't make any other observations.

[pH]

4 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I live at the north end of the Willamette Valley. 

…

 

There is plenty of opportunity for localized flooding close to the present rivers but the biggest material natural danger I am likely to face is an earthquake, or more remotely wildfire.

Now, yes, but Columbia River floods used to be enormously destructive. In your area, Vanport, which was the second largest city in Oregon at the time, was completely destroyed by a Columbia River flood in 1948. 
 

That was a major driver for the negotiation of the Columbia River Treaty - the first two dams built in Canada under the treaty (Keenlyside and Duncan) were intended as  “water storage” to regulate flows in the river.

[monkeysarefun]

5 hours ago, DaveF said:

 

Like most people I heard the news this morning, stating that inflation has reached 10.1%

 

1 hour ago, simontaylor484 said:

Looks like we have a new new Home Secretary 

 

THATS not interesting news! says my MSN newsfeed where the top UK news item is "McDonald's fans 'shaken' after learning what sweet and sour sauce is made from".

 

 Evan-May Gillott, 27, claims to have been left 'shaken' after finding out her favourite sauce contained fruit, having never even so much as 'associated' the condiment with fruit.

Sharing her curious discovery online, Evan-May asked others to try and guess what fruit the iconic sauce actually contained. Many were left just as thunderstruck as she had been by the answer, with one person positively aghast that 'the worst fruit to exist makes the tastiest sauce'.

 

"About a week ago I won a free meal through monopoly and whilst eating the sauce I just became curious about what it was actually made of. So I read the ingredients and was completely shocked to find out it was from apricots."

 

Taking to TikTok, with a video that has since clocked up more than 242,000 views and 13,000 likes, Evan-May asked her followers: "Am I the only one who didn't know what fruit it is made from until today?"

The TikTok user then went on to reveal that the fruity ingredient was in fact apricot, not pineapple or mango as some had wrongly guessed, leaving many of her followers in a state of complete astonishment.

One person gasped: "I was 100% convinced it was pineapple, maybe cos they put it in the little tubs when you get a Chinese".

 

 

  So there,  @polybearwith your unfounded barbs about Maccas having rats in it, it obviously can't cos eventually one of their customers will read the ingredient list, see " Rattus Norvegicus" and take to Tik Tok to proclaim if she wanted vegetables in her Mcdonalds she'd have bought extra chippies.

 

Last word from Evan-May:  "I’ve never actually thought about it, but now I’m wondering about all sorts of condiments - I mean what about brown! They’re just so elusive."

 

 

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[New Haven Neil]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

quickly decided that accurately working it out would most definitely send me into a very dark kennel full of rabid black hounds - and that's before I even consider stuff like depreciation.....

 

 

I've just been putting our gas and electricity consumptions into an XL graph (edit 2017 to date), just out of curiosity.  Interesting results, in that we have had a very frugal year, although we only really started giving that some real thought in the summer.  Last winter was mild, yes. but both were the lowest ever. LED's, and conscious use of the woodburner and not lazily putting the heating on for an hour first sort of thing obviously was working.

 

However.....changing the data to COST....there was that bl@@dy dog, so deleted that one pronto. Jeeze....terrifying. Don't do it. 

Edited October 19, 2022 by New Haven Neil

[Ozexpatriate]

29 minutes ago, pH said:

Now, yes, but Columbia River floods used to be enormously destructive. In your area, Vanport, which was the second largest city in Oregon at the time, was completely destroyed by a Columbia River flood in 1948. 

And was replaced by a golf course and an automotive race track (Portland International Raceway).

 

It was built in wartime emergency conditions as a factory town by Kaiser Shipyards and while it would have inevitably flooded the proximate cause was the failure of the berm supporting the Portland, Spokane and Seattle Railway which had been engineered to support rail traffic, but not as a levee.

 

The dykes were tall enough to prevent flooding but the railway embankment was saturated and essentially dissolved. Railway maintenance workers actually sandbagged a couple of 'boils' of water seeping from the berm prior to the collapse. Local Public Broadcasting (OPB) has a documentary on the flood - with the collapse of the berm about halfway through.

 

The rivers still flood. Downtown Portland was very close to a serious flood in 1996. Many suburban areas close to the rivers were flooded.

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[polybear]

1 hour ago, simontaylor484 said:

@polybear I always thought KFC was pigeons out of the town centre.

 

Flyin' Rats......

 

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

What makes you think the Federal Government of the US would care one way or another if Amazon was required to pay taxes on profits earned in the UK? There are plenty of people in this country who would be happy for them to pay taxes here too.

 

 

There was this:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/10/31/britain-will-face-retaliatory-action-us-new-amazon-tax-senior/

 

and this:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tax-us-and-we-ll-cut-investment-in-uk-tech-firms-warn-philip-hammond-vtwwhrs6d

 

- though it does now appear that The Orange One may have been behind those - and Mr. B. may now be in favour of clamping down.  Oh good.

[polybear]

46 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

So there,  @polybearwith your unfounded barbs about Maccas having rats in it, it obviously can't cos eventually one of their customers will read the ingredient list, see " Rattus Norvegicus" and take to Tik Tok to proclaim if she wanted vegetables in her Mcdonalds she'd have bought extra chippies.

 

Last word from Evan-May:  "I’ve never actually thought about it, but now I’m wondering about all sorts of condiments - I mean what about brown! They’re just so elusive."

 

Just a little snippet to read as you're munchin' on the back-end of your next ratburger.....🤣

 

https://www.delicious.com.au/food-files/news-articles/article/new-report-finds-rat-dna-human-hair-burgers/574aef64-8238-4912-af99-314345dfc094

 

 

[Coombe Barton]

...A week is a long time in politics, then Prime Minister Harold Wilson said in the 1960s ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2022/10/19/we-are-living-in-interesting-times/

[polybear]

1 hour ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

I've just been putting our gas and electricity consumptions into an XL graph (edit 2017 to date), just out of curiosity.  Interesting results, in that we have had a very frugal year, although we only really started giving that some real thought in the summer.  Last winter was mild, yes. but both were the lowest ever. LED's, and conscious use of the woodburner and not lazily putting the heating on for an hour first sort of thing obviously was working.

 

However.....changing the data to COST....there was that bl@@dy dog, so deleted that one pronto. Jeeze....terrifying. Don't do it. 

 

A certain Bear pondered earlier what the cost might be for the antics in a certain Big House - salaries, expenses, heat, light, building costs etc. - all so they can play points-scoring back-biting repetitive ping pong.  It's not as though it's a one-off event either - it appears to be "The Norm".

I'll leave it there....

[Ozexpatriate]

8 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

When I was also a wee lad growing up in the 60's, collective names were never mentioned that I can recall 

While thoroughly entertaining, and enjoyable in a trivia/'fun fact' perspective, collective nouns (in particular, species-specific collective nouns) are an unnecessary gilding on vocabulary.

 

It's fun to know of parliaments of owls and murders of crows but they are both birds and surely flocks should suffice for all avians?

 

Any why a flock of ovines but a herd of bovines? One would think one collective noun would suit ruminant mammals. Yet another pointless complication of the arbitrary magpie language.

 

Knowing about ostentations of peacocks and badelynges of (grounded) ducks is hardly necessary for effective communication. One could argue it is counterproductive.

 

"Dicker of hides" anyone? "Doading of sheldrakes"?

 

Nice (and pointless) list here.

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Not much trouble from Arthur Itis this evening but if I've been sitting still for some time I get a tingling feeling in my left lower leg and foot together with some numbness. It doesn't hurt but I do have poor circulation so I better have it checked out. 

[monkeysarefun]

6 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Depends upon the rat, I suppose. 

 

 

There is also a rat native only to Australia - Rattus Fuscipedes or the Aussie Bush Rat.  Very timid and elusive.

 

 

 

And of course highly venomous and will kill you in 10 minutes. 

Edited October 19, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, New Haven Neil said:

However.....changing the data to COST....there was that bl@@dy dog, so deleted that one pronto. Jeeze....terrifying. Don't do it. 

It is a bit like living in Mission Control here. Aditi has really taken to analysing all our consumption of energy. The solar panel inverter comes with a software package that lets you analyse (minute by minute and back for a year)not only what you get from the panels but how much you import from the grid. She seems to know how much energy using each appliance takes, and can it be run in daytime from the panels, or in  the evening from batteries or as a last resort from cheap rate at night. The last option is when she has viewed the weather forecast to predict the following days cloud cover. She doesn’t think this is a chore she really likes looking at all the information. The inverter app gives a lot more information than the in home display for the smart meter. The in home display is useful for gas consumption information. 

Edited October 19, 2022 by Tony_S

[Winslow Boy]

6 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

No.  Rats are just vermin.  Sometimes preceded by an expletive.  Hamsters are OK by me but Dr. SWMBO won't have "vermin" in the house and His Furship might make short work of one anyway.  

 

 

 

Aren't pigeons vermin with wings.

[PeterBB]

6 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

Wouldn't the temperature of cooking kill the viruses? Serious question, btw.

 

 

Yes in a. nutshell.  ID beat me to it and gave the 'full answer'.

Edited October 19, 2022 by PeterBB
Discovered ID answer

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

Just a little snippet to read as you're munchin' on the back-end of your next ratburger.....🤣

 

https://www.delicious.com.au/food-files/news-articles/article/new-report-finds-rat-dna-human-hair-burgers/574aef64-8238-4912-af99-314345dfc094

 

 

 

 

In the early 1970's US burger chain Hardees opened a chain in Australia called "Hartees".  I can still recall the jingle after 50 years "hurry on down to Hartees, where the burgers are barbequed,  Yeehaa!"*

 

IN those pre-Mcdonalds days they became the biggest fast-food operation in Australia, until a Current Affairs show called "Willisee" in 1975 received a tip off from Bankstown Council garbagemen to go check the skip-bins behind the Bankstown Hartees outlet.  When reporters from the program went to investigate, they found that the bins outside were full of empty  "Chum" ("so chunky you could carve it!"**)  dog food cans.

 

Further investigation revealed that the dog food was in fact being sliced into patties and used on the burgers at this particular location:  The devastating report went to air, crippling the Hartee’s brand in the public eye. Despite there being no evidence that such a practice went on in other Hartee’s locations, Kelloggs (the parent US company) quickly and quietly abandoned its fast food venture. No official comment was given other than a generic ‘the venture was no longer profitable’ statement, but almost overnight, all Hartee’s locations were closed and sold.

 

 

* Why is it that I have word-perfect memories of jingles and song-lyrics right through from my earliest days but struggle to remember important stuff from the same period. For instance, back when I was trying to memorise Newtons 3 laws of motion and similar stuff to pass my Higher School Certificate  exams there was a song played on the radio that made a little ripple at the time but has not been played since, called "Berserk Warriors" by  Sydney band Mental As Anything.

 

Now, if you were to ask me today to recite  the first verse of it I can rattle it off without thinking: -  

 

"Bjorn is just a viking, He is very handy with a sword; He loves nothing better; Than to cut and slash right through a horde
Mutilation, jubilation; Friendly muscles, in a tussle

Anna's a girl viking; She is very handy with a spear; She won't wear silk stockings; Armour-plated garments are her sphere
In the fjords, you can hear them; Eerie horns blow, viking love show "  etc....

 

But if you now ask me say to rattle off Kirschoffs current laws -   which I took great pains to commit to memory at that same  time-   I'll just stare at you blankly.

 

How does that work? What I do know  though is that if I was bloody well in charge I would make it law that any science or maths discovery must be set to a jaunty theme tune, or must at the  very  least rhyme, so the kiddies can remember it and thus we'll all be a smarter society overall.

 

** see! perfect recall!

 

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[jamie92208]

5 hours ago, The Lurker said:

It's often said that you're no further than 6 feet from a rat in London - or something like that (and probably also about Ankh-Morpork).

 

Good thing that you didn't walk past parliament then. Pkenty of rats there.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

On a slightly more serious note though.  This month's PM announced that she was committed to the triple lock on thecstatecpension thus promising many of us about £800 muddling tokens extra in 23/24. What she didn't say is what's going to happen with Public sector pensions and benefits. These should rise by the same amount.  I'm not holding my breath.  I wonder what rise MP's will get.

 

Jamie

[pH]

9 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

What I do know  though is that if I was bloody well in charge I would make it law that any science or maths discovery must be set to a jaunty theme tune, or at the  very  least rhyme, so the kiddies can remember it and thus we'll all be a smarter society overall.

One of my mates at school and then university was very good at making up mnemonics. As a result of one of them, over 50 years later, I can easily list the essential amino acids. However, there is no way this site’s profanity filter would allow me to post the mnemonic!

[PeterBB]

 

22 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

How does that work? What it shows though is that if I was in charge I would make it law that any science or maths discovery must be set to a jaunty theme tune, or at the  very  least rhyme, so the kiddies can remember it and thus we'll all be a smarter society overall.

 

** see! perfect recall!

 

 

Horrible Hstories, H Poisons etc books do teach good basic information in an 'interesting' way and hopefully will be remembered.

Reading ... hospitalised at early school time reading came later with specific 121 with the then teacher (Elspeth Fry) on return to school.  She really set me up in catching up with the rest of the class ...  It was also a little later that the library was 'only round the corner' and newspapers were read daily on the way home from school.  Then it was moved and required a 20 plus minute walk each way so was not visited anywhere near as often until blked and later 'car'ed'' could be a 'yous' type word if everybody used it.

 

You all lknow my pet hates of this e.g. 'think' now accepted instead of 'thing' and earlier different 'to' instead of diffierent 'from' biut as someone earlier also mentioned we woulfd probnably still be runting  ... .

Edited October 19, 2022 by PeterBB

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

And of course highly venomous and will kill you in 10 minutes. 

Thought that was a bit of a leg pull.

 

I had to look it up to make sure though! 😉

 

The Australian Museum graphic suggests a larger range than Wikipedia, though perhaps that's because they use bigger dots.

[monkeysarefun]

1 minute ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Thought that was a bit of a leg pull.

 

I had to look it up to make sure though! 😉

 

The Australian Museum graphic suggests a larger range than Wikipedia, though perhaps that's because they use bigger dots.

 

Got four "informative/Usefuls" so far!   

[Ozexpatriate]

38 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Why is it that I have word-perfect memories of jingles and song-lyrics

You're just a happy little Vegemite that likes Aeroplane Jelly. 😀

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by Ozexpatriate