BIODIESEL, Try it youll like it.

This is a quite common expression used in the financial section of the newspapers and refers to recessions.The DOW is mentioned on our news everytime the FTSE is mentioned.

[/quote] 'too bad you guys didn't learn from Laurel & Hardy'[/quote]

L and H was a long running joke in which a serious know-it-all American was continually made to look stupid at the hands of an English goofball.It was written by Americans and is one of the few things in which you make a joke against yourselves thus proving that some of you at least have a sense of proportion.

Why do you always want to be heroic?A psychologist would say it was compensation for a sense of insecurity which is understandable seeing as how women run your country by the rationing system.Women have you by the short and curlies goodstyle.

Idiocy knows no bounds . . .

Chicks like it, like sincerity, chicks are really fooled by sincerity

Ya wanna keep it down, FM . . . you know a woman just might show up here . . . GW's already been by . . .

Whaddaya mean, " ... few things in which you make a joke against yourselves ... ", Spendi - have you ever taken a look at our tax code?

Tax is an optical illusion.

Unfortunately I have to go to the pub now.While I am away you could amuse yourself by reading the thread "Women like this give girls a bad name" on the General forum and writing a parody of a short appreciation of it written by a 3 degrees,peer reviewed,high fees Manhattan pyschologist who specialises in advanced psychoanalysis of the neo Freudian school.About 100 words should be OK and an extra mark for anybody who works "biodeisel" into their confection.

The thread began life at9.43 am A2K time on Dec 1 2005 and just now @ 254pm A2K time on Dec1 2005 it was 18 pages and 171 posts.With Slappy joining in.

Slappy the freedom fighter I mean.

I liked that! ... and agree with nearly every particular. Certainly British advances in radar, the magnetron in particular were then unique and indispensable.

As for the atomic bomb the story is a mixed one. The real initial science was done by a coterie of Hungarian Jews who all went to the same schools - Szlard, von Neuman, Teller, & others, plus a few German emigrees and a notable Italian (Fermi) - in the hire initially of Britain and later the United States simply because only we had the industrial resources to do the job. The final bomb design had little that was traceable to the British "Tube Alloys" program. The weapon that evolved was fuelled by Plutonium, the discovery of Glen Seaborg at the Lawrence Berkely lab at UC. The Plutonium separation technology was developed at Hanford Washington, and the weapon physics & fusing designs were completed at Los Alamos (where one of the British staff, Claus Fuchs, a German emigree and committed Communist gave the key design secrets to the Soviets.)

Britain certainly led the U.S. by a wide margin in the development of centrifugal flow jet engines. However, in the end it was the axial flow engines developed by the Germans that dominated subsequent development in all three countries. (We had a working ME 262 axial flow engine in the lab at Cal Tech, It had better thrust and fuel economy than the U.S. J-34 engine that powered our fighters until the late 1950s.). Later both the British and the U.S. separately led the world in jet engine development, based on the German model, but with a few breakthrough British innovations, notably the Conway bypass engine.)

I will agree that you don't owe us jacks%#t.

Britain was truly heroic during WWII. However WWI was another story, You snookered us into a war that benefitted no one, and, by destroying the Ottoman empire, sowed the seeds for the weeds we are reaping now. I believe Britain's choice to side with the U.S. over Iraq was made solely out of self-interest and a wise long-standing tradition of not committing itself to the dominance of continental European powers. You of course always have the option to do just that, but I don't think you will.

I think Setanta's disclaimers about British Government support for the Confederacy were a bit excessive. The British provided the needed bases in Bermuda and the Bahamas for Confederate blockade runners throughout the war, and, as Setants has already noted, built a few commerce raiders under contract from the Confederacy. These are not the actions of a neutral in a civil war in which the legitamate government is blockading the ports of the rebels. Moreover the British maintained fairly close observer relations with the Confederate Army, which, I believe did not ecist with the Union Army. However, I agree that they stopped short of open support for the Confederacy.

I believe that thin skin is more or less equally distributed on both sides of the Atlantic, and that this thread offers several examples to support this proposition.

Anyway I think that Farmerman's biodeisel experiment is interesting and hope he succeeds, and even educates me a bit on the chemistry of it. . I also think that airstarts and humor are generally good things, particularly when you can find them together.

George, harking back to airstarts and cartridge starters, have you ever front-seated an AT-6 Texan? Now, I'm not old enough to have been there for the working life of the puppy, but I had opportunity to play with a faithful restoration a few years back. Talk about cause-for-pause - the breech for the cartridge starter was on the firewall just behind the stick - right at crotch level to a seated pilot.

As usual, George reads what he wants into other people's posts. I have never stated that the English built commerce raiders for the Confederacy. Admiral Bullock succeeded in using third parties to put a contract in at Laird shipyards in Liverpool, and as soon as the United States Minister got wind that the hull was being built as a steam-assist sloop of war, with scantlings to support naval artillery, he immediately protested to Palmerston's government, and agents of the Admiralty got on the train for Liverpool. Bullock had his agents as well, and the hull was launched with the steam plant place but not operational and put down the Mersey. The steam plant was connected at night, but not run for test until after the vessel had been partially rigged on Jersey. It was not until the vessel put into Madeira that Raphael Semmes took command, rechristened her Alabama, and had naval ordnance mounted.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the history of Nevis, St. Kitts, Antigua and Barbados, as well as the Dutch islands of St. Maartens and St. Eustasius, and the French islands of Monserrat, Guadaloupe and Martinique will immediately see how ludicrous it is to charge their parent governments will collusion when a smuggler or blockade runner puts into a beach at night--something which has been going on for more than three hundred years, and goes on today.

You have no case, George, and i resent having you willfully mischaracterize what i've written to suggest that i agree with your analysis. You're wrong, both on the issue of Palmerston's alleged support, and what i've written on the topic.

Timber, If it's the Texan trainrer you are referring to, yes I have flown it once or twice - a civilian version owned by a collector in California. It had an external electric starter though. Neat aircraft.

However for that genre, I believe the Navy T-28 was the best. It had a 2200HP cyclone engine in an aircraft designed originally with an 800HP plant, and could beat the early jet trainers in a climb to 10,000ft. A rather greasy hog (burned lots of oil) and a bit subject to torque roll, but you could hang it on the prop & fly it with the canopy open.

Setanta,

I don't want to fight with you, but believe you are distorting the picture just a bit here. Bermuda was a well-organized transshipment point that was not at all like dark beaches in the Antilles. The only harbor at Hamilton was well-guarded and nothing entered or left without the aproval of the Royal Navy. If you believe the contracts were let for the construction of the Confederate raiders and that the ships were finally delivered to their buyers - all without the knowing complicity of the British government, then I have a few other things I would like to sell to you.

You're in denial.

An opportunity to show your creative writing skills is refused.

You are sticking to the same sort of things Delia Smith sticks to and she's a technical expert on ladles and soup and non-stick frying pans and fluffy,delicious chips which are a lot more interesting than which juice works best where and she's lovely as well although she's been seen on TV recently looking a little worse for wear after what was obviously a suck on a bottle containing a strong narcotic.

Are you writers or just self-justifying knob-heads?

If you believe that having lorded it over the crew of a naval vessel in the 20th century gives you special insight into naval history, i have some purchases to suggest to you. From the 1640's onward, on Burmuda, in the Bahamas and in the Antilles, American ships smuggled slaves, molasses, rum--and all either with the connivance or the blindness of officialdom. You're attempting to plead a special case based on the merely mundane.

Only two commerce raiders came out of English yards. The steam-assist commerical sloop which became Florida was already under construction as a fast merchant ship in the China trade, when it was purchased by a southern agent, and was fitted out in Nassau--and that included the necessary retro-fitting of iron scantlings, because it had not originally been ordered with a hull which would support naval artillery. Hull 290, which became Enrica, which became Alabama, was the only purpose-built commerce raider to come out of an English yard. I don't care if you believe the sequence of events whereby Bullock let the contract, it's construction attracted the attention of the American agent in Liverpool, who reported it to Adams, the U.S. Minister, who lodged a protest with the government. I've already noted that Palmerston had an almost pathological hatred of the United States, and was contemptuous of Lincoln. Once the cat was publicly out of the bag, however, it was all his ministry was worth to allow the construction of any more commerce raiders, or to collude in supporting the southern Confederacy, because of the high regard in which Lincoln was held by the most of English citizens at the time.

A contention that England substantially supported the Confederate States in that war is without merit--it was never policy, and the little skullduggery which was accomplished was not of great material value. At no time was the official policy of the government anything but neutrality. For your information, military observers from all the European armies accompanied all of the major general staffs on both sides in the war--the French especially enjoyed following McClellan around because he set such a good table. The Prussians were well represented, too. This was never unusual--Irvin McDowell was the American observer with the French Army during the Solferino and Magenta campaigns in Italty in 1859.

Have you ever read the Bill of Lading of the good ship Bounty.Not that it was unusual or special in any way.It was standard practice.It's in the Admiralty records.It's a real human document untouched by human psychophants and hired-in dressers of the rich and famous.And if you do it for free you're a long way down the pecking order.

Tell you what Setanta. I will concede the point to you, based on the many particulars you have related. However I remain skeptical. The U.S. was seen as a meddlesome potential rival by Great Britain in the early 19th century and they could only calculate that their strategic situation would be improved by the breakup of the union. The North was a potential rival in export trade and the South a reliable provider of raw materials.

Spendius, what in the hell are you talking about??

For the record:



This statement is unwarranted. When Palmerston held the foreign portfolio for so many years, he was famous for using the Royal Navy to bully other nations. Throughout his career, he expressed contempt and hatred for the United States, and steadily predicted its eminent dissolution. He was delighted at the prospect of civil war in North America. However, in 1861, his cabinet make it clear that they would not support him in any belligerency. Public opinion would have toppled his government if he had attempted it. The Trent incident enraged him and many in the House of Lords--but it panicked the Commons, in which the members were alarmed at the prospect of losing their seats if they were seen as supporting the enemies of Lincoln.

The same applied to the self-styled Napoleon III--for whatever his sympathies may have been, he dared not openly support the southern Confederacy. Any statement to the effect that either England or France supported the Confederate States is without merit.

I wish I had $1000 for everytime I'd been asked that by very,very nice men.

Spendius never has any more idea of what he is talking about than we do--i wouldn't worry about it if i were you.

The biggest concerns of the Royal Navy from 1859 onwards were France and Russia. The French campaign into Italy, after their brief alliance in the Russo-Turkish War of 1853, alarmed the English, who had soured on "Napoleon III." Until early in the 20th century, the principal European naval rival was seen as France--Jackie Fisher invented the destoyer--originally known as a torpedo boat destroyer--because the French had decided to compensate for their inferiority in line of battle ships by putting to sea in the Bay of Biscay with a cloud of fast torpedo boats.

The Russians were enraged and humiliated by the entire Crimean campaign, and by being obliged by treaty to limit their naval activities in the Black Sea. But the English failure to assert themselves in the Baltic had emboldened them, and their new forays into Kamchatka and Port Arthur lead them to make up and deploy a significant Asiatic Squadron. It was the principal "extra-European" concern of the Royal Navy, and when the Russians continued to maintain a large Asiatic squadron based on Port Arthur after the sale of Alaska, the English were moved to attempt to force the Canadians into creating a Navy. The Canadians, however, weren't having any. The English then turned to Japanese, making a deal whereby they would provide the Japanese Empire the expertise to build a first-class fleet, if they would conclude a mutual-assistance treaty. The Japanese were nothing loathe, and the treaty was in force for more than fifty years. The destruction of two Russians fleets did not end the perceived need for the Japanese alliance, as the Royal Navy had by then become alarmed by the Imperial German fleet abuilding, and had decided to rely on the now excellent Japanese Imperial fleet to protect their Asiatic stations and the west coast of Canada. In fact, in 194, the Japanese honored that deal, sending Izumo to the Pacific coast of Canada to checkmate German commerce raiders.

There was, from the time of the Mexican War onward, when the United States Navy ran off the Royal Navy and the French Navy (who were blockading Vera Cruz in a vain attempt to collect debts for their nationals in Mexico) a studiously maintained blind spot in Royal Navy policy. Their mantra became one for two--they would maintain a fleet equivalent to the next two largest European fleets. They steadfastly refused to take the United States Navy into consideration, and looked nervously at incidents such as the 1905 Venezuelan border and debt collection disputes, as they assiduously avoided a consideration of what a hostile United States Navy would mean to them.

In fact, the battleships which were destroyed at Pearl Harbor in 1941 were the ships which were built before the Great War, and which represented (although English historians have never admitted it) the first time in history in which any fleet equalled the building program of the Royal Navy.

Spendi,
Biodiesel is not intended for human consumption. This may clear things up a bit.