Years ago some pubs barred women from the bar room. I always wondered why. Of course I now realise it was to protect the delicate sensibilities of men as they discussed Plymouth Argyle or Plato from the predatory stare of women. Men are much tougher these days.
Steve is obviously trying to goad me.
I may as well bite.
He has obviously found himself on what Henry Miller referred to as the "Ovarian Trolley" and is seeking to present it in the best possible light.
Bernard Shaw remarked that giving women the vote would result in everyone talking about their ovaries.Hardly a wild prophecy having seen how things have turned out.
The problem with women being allowed into men's meeting places is that a certain censorship follows automatically and men are thus divided and easy prey.One only has to think of the self censorship we men apply on these threads because we know that women of sensitive natures will be reading our submissions.
I speak from direct experience.I am a member of a working men's social club which used to have until very recently a football team and a cricket team and a bowling team and a darts team.All these teams played in the county league.They also had the main bar as an exclusive preserve of men.
Then they applied for a lottery grant to improve their sporting facilities.After some lengthy negotiations a substantial grant was approved providing it was used to build two netball courts which required a reduction in the size of the cricket field and that women were allowed in the main bar.This was accepted and now the club is closed,all the teams are disbanded and most of the men now spend their leisure time in soft furnishing outlets or garden centres where they stroll hand in hand with their wives admiring the items their wages are now squandered on and purchasing such torture instruments as a Black and Decker Workmate or a motor mower.This whole process took a mere four years during which time the sound of leather on willow was replaced by high pitched squeakings interrupted at 10 second intervals by a shrill refereesses whistle and culminated in a chaotic car park scene where parents came to collect their red thighed daughters.
The MCC also succumbed to a lottery grant temptation of a much greater sum one of the conditions of which was that women were to be allowed into the sacred precincts of the Long Room.
No doubt there were other conditions.One of the results of such thinking is that it is now considered right and proper for cricket players to turn down opportunities to represent their country at the highest level in the most noble game the world has ever seen,or will ever see,in order that they can hold their dear wife's hand as she drops one in the maternity unit.No doubt they have to be dressed appropriately for such auspicious occasions in pale blue frocks and frilly hair restrainers such as one sees women wearing on chocolate factory production lines where the final touches are given to the most special of the delicacies.
I did hear of a club in Manchester which was offered £2 million pounds by the lottery provided it would accede to similar dmands but,to it's great honour and dignity,refused and is still thriving.
The lottery is run by a woman.It is a mechanism by which men are slowly being emasculated and anybody who buys a ticket,which is poor value anyway from a betting standpoint,is placing another small stab wound into our most delicate part.I have never purchased a lottery ticket in my life and never will.The President of our local golf club won £20,000 on the lottery and as a result lost all credibility and authority and some of the more educated members approached him as they would a dog mess on the pavement.I use the past tense there for obvious reasons.
The media will of course not tell you any of this due to reasons too sordid to discuss in a mixed sex environment.
Im sure you can deal with all that travail there spendi.
Ive now figured out the ratios that my diesel fuel (complex methyl/ethyl esters) will be produced along with the by products (glycerine) and (crud).
Its about a60/25/15 split. The crud is rather nasty and needs to be disposed as a Solid Waste. The diesel fuel has to keep a pH slightly above neutral, and the glycerine , My wife discovered can be used to make a great soap.
fm-
I have to admit that I often have to buy deisel fuel because the confounded contraption is a dumb hulk of rusting metal without it.
But I find it a quite simple process.I simply pull up at the back of my local filling station,don my protective gloves,remove the cap off the filling tube,press trigger and hey presto-the government does the rest even providing me with the paper which the owner of the garage has a duty to collect and off I go.No crud.
Do you brew your own beer?I knew a guy once who made his own coffin.
And I never use soap in line with my 2 million year ancestry.
spendius wrote:....in order that they can hold their dear wife's hand as she drops one in the maternity unit....
I thought as Strauss dropped an easy catch in the test match that there was unnecessary roll reversal going on.
Anyone see the article on growing high-fat algea from coal emissions?
Drew Dad, I didnt see the article but Id like to. Fatty algaes are great biodiesel bases. I have no idea what an algae based biofuel would smell like but Id try it unless it gagged me.
Ros, I wonder how many acres itd take to be fully energy independent
Spendi, as usual, I have no idea what the hell youre talking about but I didnt wanna ignore you. Do you imply that you put diesel into your petrol burning engine? Youll gunk it up.
I read that story earlier today and wondered the same thing. *shrugs*
heres the deal. It takes an infusion of complex sugars and water to make the "must" and the most alcohol you can get is between 6 and 12 % based upon the tempreature of the reaction vessels and the yeasts (wild yeasts are not great). Then you have to distill it and dry it although 90% alky will burn, it actually needs to explode to move the crankshaft.
A diesel is a function of the compressibility not the flash point. So its actually easier to make diesel as long as you have an oily feedstock an alkohol and a base. Biodiesels can, like alcohol also be made from beans, peanuts, mustard, rape, algae, etc anything with an oil content. Pineneedles even work, course your gonna smell like Mr Clean goin down the road.
I knew a scientist once,he lived alone,who worked in the forensic laboratories.When a brain or other body part was finished with he used to save the pickling solution a fill his motorbike tank up with.
He had a BSA 250 which he took to nostalgia rallies but it did sputter a lot.He had a handle-bar moustache as well which enabled his fellow scientists to see at a glance what he had had for breakfast.
so, he destroyed evidence ?
This was from the article:
Quote:Filling up on ethanol isn't new. Henry Ford's Model Ts ran on it. What's changing is the cost of distilling ethanol and the advantages it brings over rival fuels. Energy visionaries like to dream about hydrogen as the ultimate replacement for fossil fuels, but switching to it would mean a trillion-dollar upheaval--for new production and distribution systems, new fuel stations, and new cars. Not so with ethanol--today's gas stations can handle the most common mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, called E85, with minimal retrofitting. It takes about 30% more ethanol than gasoline to drive a mile, and the stuff is more corrosive, but building a car that's E85-ready adds only about $200 to the cost. Ethanol has already transformed one major economy: In Brazil nearly three-quarters of new cars can burn either ethanol or gasoline, whichever happens to be cheaper at the pump, and the nation has weaned itself off imported oil.
I start to feel hope when I see that it's not only the green of the environment, but the green of the money that is saved in doing it.
Annual World Consumption of Oil-
28,460,000,000 barrels
US Consumption-20,000,000/day.
What is the "available for use" energy from the sun
striking the earth's surface per day.
spendi, interesting points all. Ill bet theyd make an interesting thread, why not start one?
It's your baby fm.
The oil is a store of billions of days of sun's energy and being squandered in just a few short years.
Isn't global warming through oil consumption a certainty.It is as if all that past sun's energy is to be released in the blink of an eye.I'd bet that if life expectancies were of biblical proportions we wouldn't be doing what we are doing.
Why should we worry about our grandchildren?We tell them how much we love them don't we?Isn't that enough for them?
So I'm sure you will agree Spendy that with oil depleting and the remaining reserves concentrated in the middle east, it was vital to consolidate western control over that strategically important area.
Steve-
I would 100% agree with that so long as the word "vital" means vital for us to continue with the general splurge and not vital in any scientific sense.
I can imagine others taking a view of "vital" which might not agree with the very subjective manner in which you used it.
Show me a "scientific" who would not only not refrain from such a twisting of the language but would hardly be aware he was doing it so vital is it to his objective world view and his sense of self respect.
And to even suggest he might be "institutionally racist" would be in very bad taste on the day when the House of Commons is debating the vitally important matters it is today.
