So who's paying for this bit of ecobollox ... ?

[Arfa Daily]

There was a small gasworks near where I live. The site is still there, and the old coking furnace and chimney are still in place, and form a 'feature' of the use that the building is now put to. The coke that was produced from the gas making process, went to a car engine casting plant nearby, and was also bagged and sold to the general public, so there must have been a demand for it for 'household' use. I seem to remember my parents buying both coal and coke, and I have a dim recollection of a fire being 'made' with coal, and then banked with coke, which burnt much more slowly, and gave off a more steady heat than a roaring fire up the chimmally ... I also seem to recall the fire being 'calmed' at night by banking it up with powdered and chipped coal that my old dad used to refer to as "nutty slack" I think it was ??

Arfa

[Jules]

Barking Toads as far as the eye could see!

[geoff]

In message , "dennis@home" writes

The flashing light and the words "Dennis at the wheel" ?

[geoff]

Yup - I saw it, looked at the speedo and my speed looked OK to me

[Arfa Daily]

Same happened to a friend of mine. He said that his looked like a Russian shot putter, dressed like the bad-arsed ones in Hostel - plastic apron, the lot ! He said that her English was less than satisfactory, and the thing that finished him off with her was that after she had finished 'examining' his teeth - and apparently he thought at the time that she was going to lug a couple of fillings out, she pulled on them so hard with the hooky thing - she then started saying "extraction, extraction" and pointing at the back of his mouth ...

He now goes to my dentist. English, slightly eccentric, as all of the best dentists and doctors are, and the gentlest most caring practitioner you could ever wish to meet. And he's NHS, and he doesn't believe in making you have a dental health insurance policy that costs you more per year than the actual costs of your treatment.

Arfa

[Clive George]

That's good. Others are claiming they don't have sufficient processing power left to handle all the things they need to. You're not. Which means you can handle all the things they claim they can't.

But you just said you're already driving at a level where you can cope with the amount of information coming in. That's fine - you're not the one who'll be getting caught out by new speed limits or other unfamiliar situations.

Or are you now telling me that you do drive beyond your abilities?

[Clive George]

'fraid so.

Oh look - it was you:

"You aren't actually driving the road by memory, you are prioritising the important stuff, like what that kid on a bike is about to do not if the number on a stick is the same as it was yesterday."

Ok, so that's a subset of what dennis said, but the excuse he mentions is one which is used rather too many times.

[Clot]

Indeed. But you are surely teasing us with your alleged ignorance? When I were a nipper, t'was me duty to maintain the central heater boiler which thrived on coke. To get it started, I'd use them wooden boxes which were used to import items. I had to use the axe and ensure that the sticks were of the right dimensions to fit int' 'ole and elp combustion. Then some suitable quantity of appropriately sized coal to git the bsggsr goin'.

Eh up, I forgot the paper that were stuck on the nail ont' door of the small room that I put in the boiler before the wooden sticks.

Then, the main fuel, coke.

Now, if you wished to avoid excessive work, you learnt when and how to riddle the grate to ensure that all the clinker went through. If you failed to keep it goin', mum was not best pleased, especially on a Monday!.

To keep the backboiler going in the fire in the dining room, what helped the boiler to heat the water, you needed to make sure that Dad got a roaring fire going before he went to bed then closed down the admission of air and placed on the slack or nutty slack. Where we lived was windy and slack was advisable being smaller in dimension and ensured the fire survived the night.

We did have fire guards!

Would this be allowed by the blxxdy Elfin Safety these days?

The flat bed coal wagons on the streets with loose sacks on the back. The poor buggers carrying 1 cwt of coal.

Them were the days?

[Rod]

And the sheep which grow the wool wouldn't fart?

[Rod]

Or 2cwt before WWI.

[Frank Erskine]

On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:40:41 +0000, Rod had this to say:

Sheep aren't cattle.

[T i m]

But you are (or are choosing to) miss the point. If you regularly drive a route you 'know' all the signs so don't look for them. Even less so if you are concentrating on something more important (kid on road).

No one has said you can't see kid AND sign but most people would assume the sign read today the same as it read for the last 10 years.

Or maybe your memory is so bad that you would (always)? What if the sign was obscured by a lorry. Would you park up and go back and read it, in case it's changed (if we are being silly).

T i m

[Steve Firth]

Casein, oops! Derived from milk, the eco-loonies don't like that. Cellulose Nitrocellulose Cellulose Acetate Butyrate (CAB) Rubber (incl vulcanised and chlorinated)

And I'm sure there are many more. Mostly however they tend to be crap. Would people really want to have highly flammable/exploding knife handles in their kitchen for example? Umm other than me, that is.

[1] nitrocellulose.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Or sneakers made of rubber and cotton.

Mine is mostly anyway.

no need for animal stuff in furniture at all. Leather is the exception.

Horsehair is useful tho.

Mind if I dont'? :-)

[Derek Geldard]

Phenol Formaldehyde innit ?

Whereja get the phenol ?

Whereja get the formaldehyde ?

Derek

[The Natural Philosopher]

plastics can be made from any number of hydrocarbon feedstocks. Oil is of course an organic vegetable based material.Its just been pre processed by a few million years.

[Derek Geldard]

DIRC ...

As a 10y.o. kid playing around with fire during half term at Bonfire Night, once you got them lit you couldn't put them out ?

Derek

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. The dust, which cools, settles out quicker than the CO2 which warms..

All this gotr me looking at historical volcanoes., and the last great mass extinction. I wonder if there is any coincidence that a large asteroid hitting the planet coincided with a massive volcanic eruption..never thought to study the stresses on a planet when hit hard with a cosmic bullet. I wonder..

The other thought that occurs, is that whilst we may technically have the means to prevent climate change, as a species we don't have the supra national political structures, the educational sophistication, and the general mental outlook, to make it realistic.

I suspect what in fact will happen, is that lots of people will in fact die.

[Derek Geldard]

Jesus H Christ on a bike. No wonder *all* the men (meaning all the dads) in the street I grew up in were played out sometime between 50

- 55.

I was just thinking to myself "He's got that wrong, they were only half a hundredweight".

Remembering that the "coalman" would carry sacks of coal right throught the house to where the coal was stored even upstairs or down, and leaving a trail of coal dust and black smears on the decorations wherever he went.

Derek

[dennis]

So you admit to having so many incidents that it has become a learnt response. You really are a pratt.