[Hands up, who's responsible]

But what is not clear (not to me, anyway) is was the damn thing packed with explosive or not?

[Responding to specific questions]

[quote user="Miss Babs"]Google is OK, but I think its good to hear about people who have been in a similar situation and share anecdotes, or it could be that some people a really bad at searching google, you know the info there but just can't get to it [8-)]but I do agree that people could thank you if you've helped or even just update on how things have gone.[/quote]

Good point. Also it is a pretty poor outlook for the future of human intercourse (do try not to snigger at the back) and the continued health & happiness of internet forums if our online relationships deteriorate to talking solely to a bloody search engine.

Plus, some of the results they turn up are complete rot.

Asking people is much more...human.

But I agree: not at least saying thankyou is jolly rude and no incentive to those trying to help. Neither is the rapidity with which some people seem to get shirty if they don't get exactly the answer they want.

[Free Corsica!]

But do other Italian islands have independence movements? Are there sepratists on Sardina or liberationists on Lampedusa? Me, I'd like to see autonomy for Rockall. I know that that is nowhere near Corsica, but what the heck.

[Buying bois de chauffage]

"That's a very interesting point about the volume occupied by the cut

logs.  If the same logs stay the same diameter, and they are stacked

end-to-end like they were before being cut (as in the diagrams) how on

earth can they pack more tightly?

Does the sawdust derived from

the first cut really amount to 0.2 m3, and 0.1m3 for the second (same

sized) cut?  No, surely not.  Two cuts would take no more than 2% of

the length of a 100cm log, and re-stacking the pieces would need a

small gap between the ends.

I can understand how shrinkage would

make a stere of green logs occupy perhaps 0.7 or 0.8m3 when dry,

because the diameter of the log shrinks.  So can anyone explain how

this works please?"

Nothing to do with the sawdust, nor with logs being dried in between.

Simply, the smaller the pieces that you have to work with, the easier it is to pack without gaps.So the same weight of wood packs into a smaller space when cut.

If you want an analogy, consider what volume a pile of rocks would occupy with all the gaps in between compared to the same rocks smashed into gravel.

[Buying bois de chauffage]

Sellers of wood do have certain notoriety when it

comes to quality & quantity delivered against what was promised. I got

caught too, some years back. Just the once.

That said, they do occasionally get unfairly slighted.

An acquaintance of mine (a bit of a twit IMO) got most shirty when he ordered

10 stere of 50cm logs, stacked them, measured the stack and found he’d

got a little over 8 cubic meters.

It took three of us to convince him that a stere of

logs 1m long should indeed occupy 1 cubic metre, but shorter logs stack more

tightly and hence a stere of 50cm logs occupies 0.8 cubic meters. That’s

the NF definition, not something we made up on the spot. He only conceded once we had taken a small stack of the logs, measured it, then cut them in half and restacked them in a smaller space to demonstrate. And even then he was still muttering under his breath.

[Security of French Banks]

For once in

my life I'm with Logan. Shorting stock is per se no more speculative than going long – i.e. buying

the shares in the belief that they are going to go up in price. The only difference

is that everyone thinks that they’re winning when the price of a stock goes up.

If some naughty people colluded to manipulate a stock price then that is

illegal and they should be punished. In the UK this will probably mean 48 hours

detention in the Dorchester with full access to the minibar, but they might get

extradited to the US (I believe HBOS has a US listing?) where of course there

is a much more relaxed attitude to torture - sorry, "enhanced interrogation

techniques” -and they could get 930 years to life.

 

Frankly

compared to the blood-letting that is still to come in the US (anyone own

Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs?) Europe is

getting off lightly: our comparative conservatism with respect to credit

default derivatives and other perverse inventions of the twisted Wall Street

mind has probably saved our bacon and, like Scrooge, we still have some money

left with which to be mean. Particularly since if the above follow Lehman into

the abyss they’ll pull a whole pile of awkward transactions in with them and the counterparties can wriggle out.

 

That doesn’t

of course mean that we are going to get off scot free, and it is very sensible

to spread risk, but personally, now that HBOS and Northern Rock are off the

block, I don’t see there are many other vulnerable institutions in Europe.

 

Sometimes

being dull, unimaginative and traditional is good.

[Declaring speeding fines to insurance companies]

Certainly Axa don't seem to be overly exercised by minor infractions. My dear wife lost a couple of points (not that I EVER mention it in her hearing), dutifully phoned them up to confess and they said something along the lines of  "that's nice, but we don't care."

Reading the small print I discovered that all they really did seem to care about was whether anyone had lost their licence in the past X years.

Still, since there seems to be a range of experience on this topic I think you're being wise 'fessing up just in case.

[End of the World or not?]

[quote user="Bugbear"]

Well, lets hope you're right on this occasion Pickles. I just wish I had your in-depth technical knowledge on this subject.

Nuclear scientists, for example, are always going on about the safety of nuclear power stations, but I think Chernoble and Three Mile Island tend to pose a question or two.

Trust the word of a group of scientists messing about with the unknown, I think I'd rather trust a labour politician.......[:)]

[/quote]

Be fair now - Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were caused by engineers screwing up, not scientists. Wouldn't be so bad, but in both cases they were only on site to mend the photocopier and they got carried away. True that. Heard it off a bloke down the pub.

[How low will it go]

You know, that chap in the glasses on News Biscuit looks VERY familiar. In fact, I'm sure I've been drinking with him in the not so distant past...

[First fire of the winter?]

[quote user="The Riff-Raff Element"]

Ash wood (frène) is said by many to be the best for firewood...

[/quote]

...or even "frêne," which is very similar, but slightly straighter. [:)]

[First fire of the winter?]

[quote user="Cathy"]

[quote user="LyndaandRichard"]Regarding firewood, I have taken a heap of rotted oak panelling off my shed, cut the good bits out and refitted on the shed. I now have a lot of scrap wood which I am planning to cut to size and burn on the fire when winter arrives. A lot of the timber has nails left in it, and it would be a lot of work to remove all. My question is can I burn the timber, including nails and clear the nails out when the fireplace needs cleaning? Someone told me that you should take the nails out, but I don't understand why.

[/quote]

Can you burn wood with nails in or should you take them out first?  I would like to know this question as well as Linda and Richard.

 

[/quote]

I've been burning off a huge pile of oak spars taken from a barn we renovated, bit by bit, for three years. These are full of nails and they burn just fine. Of course the nails end up in the ash and add to it, so you may need to muck out a little more often.

Ash wood (frène) is said by many to be the best for firewood, not least because at a pinch it can be burned green and requires very little seasoning.

It is possible to properly season wood in a few months, but is requires quite a lot manual labour to turn and re-stack wood. I do a fair bit of this because I get quite a few free trees to chop up and take away. But when buying wood I ask a lot of questions and really only want oak, beech or ash and then with at least a year outside before I take delivery.

[Faith Schools]

There is a certain

piquant irony in the degree of faith that many people who might describe themselves

as rational, level-headed thinkers place in science and the pronouncements of

scientist.

I trained

as a scientist, I’ve a very solid grounding in the physical sciences, I am pretty

good at maths, and I am as guilty as the next man of doing this. For example,

we all know that the Earth goes around the sun and the converse is not the

case. But I’ve never made the necessary observations myself to confirm this. I’ve

taken it on faith that lots of other people have made them and have reported

correctly.

Rather

fewer people have made the measurements necessary to test the hypothesis that

the universe started with a big bang. I still believe it did, but I’m investing

a little more faith here.

And as

science moves forward and into ever more esoteric realms of particle physics

& cosmology – comes closer to knowing the mind of God, to borrow a phrase

from Stephen Hawking – I’m going to be heading into the region of blind faith

because I won’t have a clue how, let alone have the opportunity, to go about testing

the hypothesis that are going to be banded around.

In fact,

only a handful of people will be able to truly understand the “truth” that is

revealed. The rest of us will have to make do with a best-selling paperback

book that “explains” the findings of these Lords of the New Church.

I just hope

that they aren’t going to be winding us up. [:D]

[Faith Schools]

[quote user="allanb"][quote user="The Riff-Raff Element"]I stand by what I said: atheist fundamentalism is alive & well and is just as pernicious as its theastic counterparts. I am sure that if you do a web search you will find the term is in current usage and is taken to mean that which I have described.

[/quote]

RRE: I am an atheist, and I have explained why.  I would like you to explain why you think my view can be described as "fundamentalist".

[/quote]

Sorry, what can I have said to make you think that I think that you, personally are in any way a fundementalist? There are christians and there are christian fundementalists; there are moslems and there are moslem fundamentalists; there are atheists and there are atheist fundamentalists.

Since I have no idea to what extent you are dogmatic about your views I cannot pretend to know what you are. But if, for example, an atheist expressed the view that all reference to theistic faiths should be removed from day-to-day life (demolition of places of worship, abolition of all religious festivals, burning of books, etc) and that all those caught following banned faiths would be persecuted I might regard them as a fundamentalist. Christians or Moslems following comparible paths I would describe in the same way.

[Faith Schools]

[quote user="thunderhorse"][quote user="The Riff-Raff Element"]...Some

people, not me, but other people, would say that the evidence for the existence

of God is all around us, not least in the existence of “holy” books that are

supposedly divinely inspired. Pretty shaky in my view, but then so is casting

out the possibility of the existence of the supernatural when the hypothesis

cannot be disproved.[/quote]

It's very easy to cast out the possibility of the existence of the supernatural, especially when there is no testable evidence to support such a notion. The onus of proof is on those who assert that the supernatural exists.

Following your argument, should we accept the possibility of mermaids and unicorns, and teach similar idiotic ideas in schools, seeing as how the hypothesis cannot be disproved?

[/quote]

Onus? Some

key points in the philosphy of science:

 - Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence;

 - An hypothesis can only be discarded once it can be tested;

 - Observations defeat theory;

 - A scientist who disregards any of the foregoing is not a scientist. He

is a muppet.

Sure, I can state that unicorns do not exist. And tomorrow a fossil unicorn

might turn up. And I might try to argue that they still don't exist and have

never existed, like the people who argued that the Earth was not a sphere and

did not go around the sun despite there being plenty of evidence that it does

or those who encountered dinosaur bones and argued for years that they were

forgeries. On the other hand I could suppose that both unicorns and mermaids

are mythical creatures and no evidence currently exists to

suggest they were ever real but that I couldn't say that it would never appear. That is a rigorous

philosophy. And that is what I would teach, were I called upon to do so.

I imagine that some people would except that it is possible that life might one

day be shown to exist elsewhere in the universe, it being a big place and all.

As things stand – as far as I know – there is not a single shred of hard

evidence that life does exist elsewhere. Following your logic, should we now state that we are,

definitively, alone?

[Faith Schools]

[quote user="allanb"][quote user="The Riff-Raff Element"]...as for

"atheist fundamentalism"...[/quote]

I'm glad we have a measure of agreement on the basis of education, but I can't let you get away with that phrase.  Either you don't understand atheism, or you don't understand fundamentalism.

Atheists may have various reasons for being atheists, but there is no "fundamental" source that they claim.  No holy book, no inspired prophet, no infallible representative of a deity, no revelation in the wilderness, no visions, no tablets of stone.

[/quote]

Fundementalism has no need of holy books, nor prophets, nor tablets of stone. They are just props. All it really needs is a totalitarian streak, a lack of tolerence and an unwillingness to engage. I stand by what I said: atheist fundamentalism is alive & well and is just as pernicious as its theastic counterparts. I am sure that if you do a web search you will find the term is in current usage and is taken to mean that which I have described.

[Faith Schools]

[quote user="allanb"]

Neither is a good basis for educating children.

[/quote]

You won't catch me disagreeing with that. [:D]

Some

people, not me, but other people, would say that the evidence for the existence

of God is all around us, not least in the existence of “holy” books that are

supposedly divinely inspired. Pretty shaky in my view, but then so is casting

out the possibility of the existence of the supernatural when the hypothesis

cannot be disproved.

As for

atheist fundamentalism, I think it is becoming more widespread – people like

Dawkins (for whom I used to have a lot of time until he started twittering on

about “Darwinian misfires” in an attempt to explain away things that didn’t fit

too conveniently – very dodgy approach to science, that) refusing to even enter

debate with those who don’t share his views.

And,

frankly, that is just as dangerous in my view as schools teaching creationism

as fact without entertaining other views. Both need to be presented. It’s all

about balance. That  doesn't to my mind preclude the  practice of faith-based education. But if they're taking state funding there must be balance.

[Faith Schools]

I suppose

that atheists could start their own faith schools. I know that they might not

regard their beliefs as faith but rather as the "truth," but that's

normal for fundamentalists.

They could all be named after famous atheist theologians such as Richard Dawkins.

Or the Rt. Reverend Dr Jenkins, bishop of Durham.

[Faith Schools]

This is pretty much a non-story I reckon. Faith schools -state funded or otherwise -  have long been compelled only to take pupils not of that faith if they are unable to fill all the places from their own catchment area.

Which, normally, they are able to do since parents will move mountains to get children into a good school and faith schools have, generally, very good results and discipline. They'll even go to church, if that's what it takes. I suspect that the governor quoted was just trying to play things down to avoid trouble.

As for the staff...jobs are seldom given based solely on ability in any line. Employers  still consider the personality of applicants: acres of qualification does not overcome a complete inability to deal with the public, for example. For a faith school I suppose this means that an attractive personality includes, well, faith.

[Forum Member cooperlola]

Behind the curve as usual, but best wishes to you both.

[Ryanair Flight Forced Landing due to Loss of Cabin Pressure]

[quote user="teapot"]

Some one had to let the cat out.[:D]

[/quote]

Ah, all is clear now. The plane being infested with mice (who hadn't paid and were therefore the worst kind of pest), Tiddles O'Leary (TOL to his admirers) was drafted in to eliviate the problem. On being told he would have to pay £15 to check in his kitty litter tray he told them to stick it and, later, being caught short, opened the cat flap in flight. Sucked to his death somewhere over the Nord Pays de Calais (a region which, let's face it, could only be improved by a shower of dead cats) it was he that caused the sudden loss of cabin air supply and unwittingly catapulted the moderately unknown shopping mall explorer Biro Hairdo to temporary fame as an aviation expert.

[Are Ryanair stopping flights Stansted/Limoges?]

Well, I suppose Limoges isn't that much further from Barcelona than is Gerona  [:D]

Perhaps that "depressurisation" incident was some kind of test for the new routing? We should be told.

[Ryanair Flight Forced Landing due to Loss of Cabin Pressure]

What I

would quite like to know is why the cabin de-pressurised in the first place? Hardly an every day occurance.

Those little oxygen masks seem pretty cosmetic, though the chemistry behind

them is moderately interesting. A pilot I knew reckoned that their primary

function was to act as a panic suppression device to give the flight crew a

relatively peaceful few minutes to make the descent. The ones in the cockpit apparently

run off high pressure enriched bottled air rather than a chemical reaction

because their job is to ensure the pilot et al remain conscious. No silly “Kenco”

coffee filter cups for them!

[Ryanair Flight Forced Landing due to Loss of Cabin Pressure]

It would seem that "a total of 16

passengers together with five accompanying family members have transferred,

at their request, to a local hospital complaining of ear ache."

Since it was at their own request, I wonder if Ryanair will be taking any further responsibility to transfer them on to Gerona (as the non-hopitalised passengers are to be) once they are discharged?

[Mr G Glitter]

Rumour has it this a.m. that once he has again transited Bangkok he will be heading off to Dubai.

[Beware of Greeks bearing gifts]

[quote user="Just Katie"]

[quote user="The Riff-Raff Element"][quote user="babcock"]If someone is too nice to you make sure that you understand whether payment is expected.[/quote]

I've had interpersonal relationships a bit like that....

[/quote]

Perhaps you could start a new thread on this one Riffy boyo

[/quote]

Not on a family-friendly forum like this I fear.