nacmacfeegle

"If I am not mistaken England had a system like this for traffic violations 8-10 years ago? How has this worked/not-worked for them?" I can only speak for Scotland works fine for me. Speed cameras are placed at notorious speeding spots and traffic in general slows down. Of course after a while you get to know where they are and their effectiveness wanes, but in general I don't have an issue with them. Suppression of freedom, not really, simplifying the issue of routine speeding tickets, yep. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Cheers Gravity Dude, that explains thing much better than my feeble attempts. "Once one storey collapsed all floors above would have begun to fall. The huge mass of falling structure would gain momentum, crushing the structurally intact floors below, resulting in catastrophic failure of the entire structure. While the columns at say level 50 were designed to carry the static load of 50 floors above, once one floor collapsed and the floors above started to fall, the dynamic load of 50 storeys above is very much greater, and the columns were almost instantly destroyed as each floor progressively "pancaked" to the ground." By the way, I no longer work for Halliburton, our division was bought out by the local management , so now I can return to ranting against horrid corporations and government dodgy dealings. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"That would be true if the fire was evenly distributed across every floor evenly, right?" That was my assumption when I was discussing this very effect with some of our structural engineers (I do the fire side). Basically no, you need a relatively small failure to start this sort of thing. Once you loose the integrity of say a supporting column, the floor above will collapse. With big heavy structures this will probably be straight downwards due to inertial effects (there is not enough force to topple the structure to one side or another), as opposed to a sort of lazy, slow leaning type collapse. The impact of the collapsing floors will be like a domino effect straight down. More likely however would be the failure of lateral ties that basically stop the main columns buckling. I would assume that fire protection would have been applied (like concrete type spray) to the main columns. If you loose lateral restraint on the columns, they become very prone to rapid buckling, again leading to progressive collapse of the floors. If you stack up a neat column of checkers or backgammon pieces, you can knock out the bottom one with a ruler in a kind of slicing motion, and the whole column will fall straight down by one checker space without toppling. If you watch the twin towers coming down, the upper sections almost remain intact until they really start building up speed, then they just disintegrate. This is because the lower floors are failing first, with the uper building coming as one huge piece. I don't know about building 7 though, and I'm not entirely convinced we are being fed the truth over the pentagon crash. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"There's a straight fact that there is a minimum temperature for the metal in those builidings to melt, causing collapse. And in Bldg 7, since no plane hit it, hence no jet fule, simple office objects in the building, ie paper, chairs, desks, etc, can't cause a hot enough fire to melt those steel beams. Fact. Next. " Sorry Kid Icarus, I've been away, but there is a bit of a misconception here. You don't have to melt the steel to cause it to fail, you just have to take it past its yield point. Depending on loading and connection details that can be at or around 550 deg c, in the oil industry we assume failure nearer to the 400 deg c for heavily loaded or fatigued structures. These temperatures are easily achievable with cellulosic fuelled fires that you would likely experience in an office environment. Once you have a critical structural failure, you can experience a progressive collapse that would look very similar to a controlled demolition. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Get yourself back soon Max, we need a worthy opponent. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"I shot the Sheriff...we listened to that CD this past weekend...the Eric Clapton version.." She's correct to be incensed because the Bob Marley version, the original, is so much better. The Clapton version is just an abomination. There's definitely an over reaction going on here, call me when you get this >< close to losing it. "yeah the words in this day and age may not be appropriate with all that is going on out in the streets but come on" To me its an anti racisim song, maybe you could highight this to the repressive school authorities. "Sheriff John Brown always hated me; For what I don't know. Every time that I plant a seed He said, "Kill it before it grows." He said, "Kill it before it grows." -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Good to see that the state of gun control in Britain has made the public safe from being shot in the face" Explain to me how 12,000 gun carrying rap fans would have prevented this then? -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

If you're gonna shoot them, shoot them like you mean it. Anything else is just a practical application nightmare. Whether or not you should be shooting them is another entirely different discussion and a quick search will soon put that one to rest. For once, I think I agree with you on a shooting matter. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Everything apart from stolen a car, never done that, I even coloured in with crayons just last night, and I enjoyed it (not as much as the Minime though) Like Jim, most of that other stuff all happened a longtime ago.

"Ashtanga AKA Nathan " He willl always be Chromeboy to me.

"Humphry Davy the English chemist isolated it in 1808 and NAMED it" He could have called it after himslef, or at least considered Humpem, or even Dayum -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

I'm currently installing about 30 million US dollars of the stuff. I call it "horriblyexpensivestuffthattakesfiteenweekstoarriveandisabitchtoworkwith" Other people call it "lightandstrongandresistanttochemicalattack" I've heard both pronunciations, but personally use the "maybeIcangetsomecheapiscescrewsoutofthisdeal" version. TIE-tay-nee-yum. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"You choose to ignore Article 18.. I have a posted legal opinion I want to attach but I can't get it to work. (it is a pdf file) " If it is printed text, you might be able to snag the text you are interested in by using the wee text select button from teh tool bar, or pressing V then selcting the text you want to copy (ctrl-C usually works). You may have to format the text prior to posting it here, depends on the quality of the original.

"Ach, but that's because you live in a house built by British standards" Hehe, I hear you my Finnish friend, my house was built with state of the art technology, but it was state of the art around 1800. "My math says that's 2.28kW all the time" Aye, but thats with the sauna switched off. I looked into fitting a sauna recently and the smallest heater for one of those is around 4.5kw.

Ah, okay I'm with you. So we still need to factor in the heating power consumption to get a decent 'energy picture', what about air con, is that a big power user too?. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"A typical house that does not pay much attention to efficiency uses an average of about 1000 watts during the day" Bill, thats only 1 kilowatt are you sure about that? Maybe in Cali it might be the case (lucky you but you'd probably use more than me on the freezer). In mid winter, cold and damp Auchenblae I need about 6 kw just to heat the living room, good job I run that on renewable wood! For Dropoutdave, 100MW is about 134,000 horsepower, or a squillion (342 million) BTU/hr. If I remember tomorrow, I'll look out some CO2, Nox, Sox, and Tox numbers for a 25 MW gas turbine for comparison. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim" Sadly a great many dicks have already been infected -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Lots of new stuff, seldom is it worthy though. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"I guess this is yet another situation where the U.N. is absolutely fuckin' useless and impotent." I'm not sure that the aid was routed via Unicef/UN etc. There is a huge corruption scandal brewing in Kenya, for what its worth, so I wouldn't trust a whole lot of what their govt says rihht now anyways. I agree with your sentiments in your earlier post though, its a shame the little people should suffer at the hands of an incompetant administration. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"But to send a food that needs to be mixed with water to a drought-striken area strikes me as...idiotic. " That was my take on it when this came up a while back, not only is water in short supply, clean water is even more scarce in these circumstances. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2055205;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#2055205 Yeah boiling the water is good, all the folks in the refugee camps have to do is fill up the kettle at the kitchen sink and switch it on. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Rappers control lighting?" Apparently, yes. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

I don't recall that one, probably not because I'm too young, I just don't recall... Wikkiquote gives me these pearls though... "Where did you get that hat?" (1953) To his wife the Queen, immediately after her coronation "British women can't cook." (1966) "The bastards murdered half my family.." (1967) When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union "What do you gargle with - pebbles?" (1969) Said to Tom Jones after the The Royal Variety Performance. "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed." (1981) Said during the 1981 recession. "You must be out of your minds.." (1982) To Solomon Islanders, on being told that their population growth was 5% a year. "You are a woman, aren't you?" (1984) Said in Kenya, to a native woman who had presented him with a small gift. "If you stay here much longer you'll all get slitty eyed." (1986) Said to British students in China. "If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine the Cantonese will eat it." (1986) Said at a World Wildlife Fund meeting. "Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world." (1991) Said in Thailand, after accepting a conservation award. "You can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly." (1993) Said to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary. "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" (1994) Said to an islander in the Cayman Islands. "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?" (1995) Said to a driving instructor in Scotland. "If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?" (1996) Said amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting. "Bloody silly fool!" (1997) Was referring to a Cambridge University car park attendant who failed to recognise him. "You managed not to get eaten, then?" (1998) Said to a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea. "It looks like it was put in by Indians." (1999) Said after he saw a poorly constructed fusebox. "Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf." (1999) Said to young deaf people in Cardiff, referring to a school's steel band. "Do you still throw spears at each other?" (2002) To an Aboriginal man on Australia's Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park. "You were playing your instruments, weren't you? Or do you have tape recorders under your seats?" (2002) Said to a children's band in Australia. "Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?" (2002) Said to a blind woman with a guide dog. "If you travel as much as we do you appreciate how much more comfortable aircraft have become. Unless you travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.." (2002) Commenting during the Jubilee tour. "The problem with London is the tourists. They cause the congestion. If we could just stop tourism we could stop the congestion.." (2002) Commenting on the London traffic debate, after mayor Ken Livingstone forced through his plan to charge motorists £5 to enter the city. "French cooking's all very well, but they can't do a decent English breakfast.." (2002) Aboard the floating restaurant 'Il Punto' on the river Orwell in Ipswich, after thoroughly enjoying an excellent full English breakfast (Il Punto is owned by Frenchman Regis Crepy). "It is surprising the way things have changed since I first became chancellor of a university 50 years ago." (2003) Source: Opening a new reseach centre at the University of York. The statement was widely misrepresented as referring to the University of York itself, rather than the University of Edinburgh, of which Prince Philip is Chancellor. (The York Chancellor at the time was Janet Baker, and the university was celebrating its fortieth anniversary.) "It doesn't look like much work goes on at this University" (2005) Overheard at Bristol University's BLADE (Bristol Laboratory for Advanced Dynamic Engineering) facility, which had been closed in order that he and the Queen could officially open it "You look like you're ready for bed!" Said to the President of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional robes. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

He can be a bit controversial though, re the 'slitty eyes' comment amogst others. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"There are well in excess of 1 billion Muslims worldwide. I think we can safely say that as far as we know very nearly all of them have shrugged it off." I think a lot of people need to bear this in mind right now. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Just give me the balloon, I'l be happy with that.