..."to the vagrant gypsy's life"... WHERED THE SUMMER GO?

Funny, about the permanence of language...or at least the persistence or longevity of words and phrases.

I mean, we go on pleasure "steamers", even if they haven't steamed for eighty years or so.
And we still go for a "sail".

Actually, their have been quite a few replica Viking longships sailing .... which can be quite dangerous:





The Swedish Viking ship "Ormen Friske", a replica of the famous Gokstad ship from the 9th century, was underway on June 22 1950 from the Elbe estuary in Germany to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, when it was caught in a storm on the North Sea and broke apart. All 15 crew members lost their lives.

I always wondered aboutn the origin of the phrase "clinker built" for what we in US call "lapstraking".

werent the Norse given credit for developing THE KEEL?

Fish have evolved keels. Pelvic and anal fins.

I 'm under the impression that a keel
relates (somehow) to the bottom of a boat or ship.

Do u feel like telling us structurally what the Norse developed ?

A keel wasnt an early feature of boats. Some culture had to develop the ships "backbone" Ive often heard that the Norsemen were given this credit.

I c

FM: Just stumbled back onto this thread. You've GOT to get some pictures on here, 1) to satisfy my morbid curiosity and 2) for your own recording of how it went.
On my way to find the Lighthouse Thread...
Joe(we, without workshops, salute you)Nation

Thomas was going to give me a quick tutorial about loading pictures freom my camera onto A2K. Hes disappeared (althoughI may see him this Fri when we meet with CI in Philly) Ive got photos and sketches from our past boat trips to me setting up my work area and now that Im beginning some cutting of frames and sections,actual work. I will , in several months, have the essence of "boatness" issue forth from the cold floor of the barn.
Im thinking that Ill get most of the cutting and numbering of strips this fall and then (cause it is waay too cold to work out there since I have no heat except for a big salamander and I dont wanna use what is essentially a wide mouthed FLAMETHROWER in the same area with volatile glues. The glues say INflammable and that usually means a flame accompanied by a boom.

Inflammable! Love it! That's proper English, that is, although maybe a tad confusing for the Yanks.

Putting photos on is quite straightforward, only needing an intermediate step.

Find a free host site for your pics; there are hundreds...I use Photobucket.

Follow that site's instructions to upload your selection of photos (they will probably call it "your album".)

When you look at the photos you have uploaded into "your album", you will see that each photo had been given a unique URL identifier.

That's the link you copy & paste into the IMG brackets in your A2K post.

It's easier to do than to describe.

Do you wear a hair shirt and matching combinations while you are engaged in these tasks effemm? I would have presumed you arise before 6 am even if you hadn't informed us of that ridiculous performance.

Projects like this one, to be even reasonably authentic, ought to involve some semblences of how a currach was made for real. And you are bloody well enjoying it. Your powerhouse is filled with the sort of nutrient the original builders of these boats would have rowed across the Atlantic Ocean to get their laughing tackle wrapped round. Not that they would have laughed much I don't suppose. I'd bet that needing a new currach would be about 100 times worse for them than needing a new boiler in the basement is for you. And they had no Yellow Pages.

We have an idea what you have had for breakfast from posts on other threads. The originals probable had a bit of cabbage stalk gruel.

And their currach was made for an economic purpose. The Theory of the Leisure Class describes the economic function of futile effort. Veblen's theory claims that the more wasteful the effort the higher the social status accrues. He goes to heroic lengths to try to discover for his readers all the variations, twists and turns, adaptations and development potential of futile effort. What would a graduation ceremony look like without the futility. Certificates might be sent through the post or thrown out of helicopters in bunches over middle-class breeding grounds.

But Veblen was writing about an elite. Not this far down the social scale. An Elite the members of which would have a carpenter make them a currach if, say, just as an example, one of them took it into their heads to present one to an Irish fishing village on the west coast to express their admiration for the traditional way of life after having read a heart-rending account of the consequences of global warming. It is posher to have someone else waste effort on one's behalf that having to go to the trouble of wasting it yourself.

Taking into account Veblen's essays on the Instinct for Workmanship you look to have chosen a sort of intellectual high wire.

If you're not wincing all the time you are carrying out your work your arms are whirling to stay on the wire.

Do IKEA not make a currach in a kit form?

a fine example of an "oxycontin moment"

I had to respond to spendi because even though I often enjoy reading him. Im more often at a loss to try to establish meaningful communications. However, I think thats the way he likes it.



INflammable, to an old American chemist equates to a bit of deflegration as opposed to a mere "lighting off". QWhen I get home Ill try the Photobucket thing , but I recall once before that Photobucket crashed my stuff after a few weeks .

I've found Photobucket stable enough, and it has quite a few useful features.

Tiny, Yahoo, and many others offer a similar service, I think. I used ImageShack before, but I like Photobucket better.

Spendy is intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, but ya gotta love him. I even tried to be friendly with him once, but it didn't work. He's like the Bramah bull of online philosophy.

Over here, inflammable just means it will catch fire, that's all. Not spontaneously, of course.

English very easy to understand ....

articulate
inarticulate

hospitable
inhospitable

flammable
inflammable
er..I mean Non...

Joe(boom)Nation

no no no no

The Americans INVENTED flammable because they couldn't understand inflammable, from inflame (mettre en flamme)

The sillies

here in the US we have many stages of catching fire, Like the Innuits have over 40 different words for snow.

from top

EXPLOSIVE
DEFLEGRATING
INFLAMMABLE
FLAMMABLE
RUSTS

I was simply bringing a scientific approach to the matter of the construction of a currach in a Pennsylvanian barn in 2oo9 AD. I'm continually being criticised and insulted (five years of it--non stop) because it is claimed I am unscientific.

If a person can get a beneficial psychosomatic effect out of an anachronistic project of the sort we are discussing, and present it as a model for emulation, then there ought to be more understanding of the methods others might choose to effect a similar result.

The evidence for the reputabilty of wasteful effort and the odious nature of useful effort is overwhelming. Why are fashion designers paid 10 times at least as much as garbage collectors?

Anyway--I'm trying to get effemm to read Veblen. He is very famous in intellectual circles. I am inclined to think that the principles he outlined of the archaic, barbarian, predatory impulse displaying itself in the wasteful consumption of goods and services are the main cause of our financial difficulties.

From a strictly scientific point of view I can see no difference between arranging pieces of lumber in a certain pattern which casual observers might be persuaded to believe is a currach and flower arranging. Or arranging pieces of coloured fabrics around the body of a lady to try to render her a more pleasing spectacle to the eye than that envisaged by Schopenhaur so long ago.

Were our hero to employ his undoubted practical skills to make toys for an orphanage I do actually believe he would derive more satisfaction. Or some seats for the gardens in the old folks home.

Spendy, a horse-racing man like you should know how to spell curragh.