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just watched the bbc 4 doc about diesel engines (and very good it was too).
during the program the presenter said that it is cheaper to transport something from shanghai to felixstowe than for your local supermarket to deliver something to your house 😯
well i thought it was pretty mindblowing anyhoo 🙂
any facts you have learned recently that were amazing to you?
Pineapples don't grow on trees 😯
Cillit bang. Mind blowing.
Curtains are REALLY expensive.
it is cheaper to transport something from shanghai to felixstowe than for your local supermarket to deliver something to your house
That's why I order all my shopping from the Shanghai branch of Waitrose.
Tonne miles .
On a related note, today I found out I could fly to Norway, buy a new tent in a shop and fly home for less than the UK trade price of said same tent. 😕
Mick Jagger sang backing vocals on 'You're so vain' by Carly Simon.
TooTall - MemberMick Jagger sang backing vocals on 'You're so vain' by Carly Simon
Really? I'm going to have to check that out.
Cheers for that (genuine big engine anorak ) 😀
Bob Holness played the sax solo on Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street.
mind blowing [b]fact[/b] of the day
Bob Holness played the sax solo on Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street.
If only it were actually a fact 😉
during the program the presenter said that it is cheaper to transport something from shanghai to felixstowe than for your local supermarket to deliver something to your house
How'd they work that out then? Cost per mile per product or something?
Bananas are actually herbs.
Not fruit.
any facts you have learned recently that were amazing to you?
That the Moon isn't a natural satellite but probably a hollowed-out planetoid from which aliens broadcast 'an artificial sense of self and the world' that humans mistakenly perceive as reality.
Blew my mind when I found that out.
Bob Holness....
...was the first actor ever to play the character of James Bond.
Today I witnessed my 1st Petit Mal Epileptic Absence Seizure...
Was teasing my workmate in Oxfam when she just glazed over and failed to respond to anything for a few minutes~ to start with, I thought I must've upset her, then realized it must be something to do with her epilepsy.
It was disconcerting and fascinating at the same time~ I was really concerned and kept asking if she was OK, without any response~ her eyes were open and she moved her head as if she was looking at something, but she had an eerie glazed look like a zombie.
When she came to, I asked her what had happened and she explained it all...
I knew about spasms and seizures, but didn't know about the absence aspect.
You can make a boat with a kitten, eggs, sugar and a blender.
A catameringue
You can do the PADI deep diver speciality course in Scapa Flow. For about the same amount of cash, you can fly to Malta, spend a week in a hotel, do the course and fly home.
However the sums fall apart when, after watching an episode of Great Continental Railway Journeys, you decide to take the train home.
"On a related note, today I found out I could fly to Norway, buy a new tent in a shop and fly home for less than the UK trade price of said same tent. "
Which tent.....i is going to norway next week 😉 is it hilleberg ? im in the market for a new un....
How'd they work that out then? Cost per mile per product or something?
I'd take a guess at the more obvious $/Mile/Kg
On that note the Space Shuttle is better value per mile than the Heathrow Express
You can make a boat with a kitten, eggs, sugar and a blender.A catameringue
Bravo.
I can fly to/from the US, buy the bike I want and have a week riding holiday for less than than the RRP of buying the bike here. In fact, I'd still save about 5%.
Getting your shopping out of the port at Felixstowe would be a total PITA though.
Wooly mammoths were alive when the pyramids were being built
That the Moon isn't a natural satellite but probably a hollowed-out planetoid from which aliens broadcast 'an artificial sense of self and the world' that humans mistakenly perceive as reality.
ernie reads too many of jivehoney's posts
I can fly to/from the US, buy the bike I want and have a week riding holiday for less than than the RRP of buying the bike here. In fact, I'd still save about 5%.
Partly you have discovered VAT...
Whats truly amazing is in checking out my trip to the states that in Utah there are a potential 17 components of sales tax all added together that can double the sales tax rate depending on which town I'm in and they wont actually tell me the cost of the item until I get to the till and will probably expect a tip for it too...
On that note the Space Shuttle is better value per mile than the Heathrow Express
shame they cancelled the Shuttle program, getting to Heathrow is a real pain now...
Wooly mammoths were alive when the pyramids were being built
Wooly mammoths built the pyramids and are encased inside in hibernation chambers waiting to come back out and take over the world....
Johnny Cash could translate Russian Morse code
Not mind blowing if you know about map projections but last night we were planning a round the world trip we're taking with some friends so had a map up:
[img] 
[/img]
One of the girls commented on how massive Greenland is and was pretty much taken aback when I pointed out that it's less than a third the size of Brazil and smaller than Algeria.
Found out recently that Edinburgh is further west than Bristol
Re lemonysam
[url=
the peter's projection map[/url]
[img] 
?081927[/img]
That the world's first commercial maglev train system was in Birmingham 1984 .
[url= http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/21/japans-maglev-train-notches-up-new-world-speed-record-in-test-run ]Shame they didn't stick with it[/url] we could all have been commuting to work at 300mph 🙂
[url= http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution ]One container ship can produce as much pollution as 50 million cars (or 30 million Volkswagens :-))
[/url]
Some interesting things in that article Bimbler, but when they talk about "Europe needs a low emission zone right around its coasts", I can't help but think that a low emission zone sounds as useful as having a "no pissing zone" in one corner of a swimming pool. It's one atmosphere, one planet etc etc - spew it out somewhere, we all get it eventually, low emission zones or not.
Anyhoo...
The [url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sake_Dean_Mahomed#Restaurant_venture ]first curry house[/url] in the UK opened fifty-odd years before [url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_and_chips#United_Kingdom ]the first chippy[/url].
OK not exactly mind-blowing, mildly diverting at best, still a good factoid though.
Is that we're off to Bike park Wales on Sat, & the weather is looking good. 🙂
If you put all the possible numbers in order, the last one will be zero, alphabetically.
On that note the Space Shuttle is better value per mile than the Heathrow Express
And to put that into context the Space Shuttle is a horrendously expensive way to put anything into space, so bad in fact that it never became commercially viable despite the original intentions.
not so much mind-blowing as just really sad - Carbisdale Youth Hostel is closed. What is mind blowing is that this was a youth hostel.
[img] https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSxYRZfFY832pUEIVsZYZ8XjkVG9PZ45VZx-p5e2iy6K0GxGk2k [/img]
[img] 
[/img]
Dead skin and dust mite poo make up one third of the weight of a two year old, unwashed, pillow.
If you put all the possible numbers in order, the last one will be zero, alphabetically.
I bet you a zillion pounds that's not true.
The word "Factoid" is only used by morons.
Factoid.
😛
franksinatra. I'm going to pretend I don't know that one.
Bob Holness was the soloist on Maggot Brain.
Now I'm scared that some dirty housework shirker will eventually have a pillow that will grow so heavy it will collapse under its own weight, and tear a hole in the space-time continuum.Dead skin and dust mite poo make up one third of the weight of a two year old, unwashed, pillow
franksinatra. I'm going to pretend I don't know that one.
try as hard as you like but you will think about it next time you are staying in a hotel!
There is no proper name for the back of the knee.
There is no proper name for the back of the knee.
Popliteal Fossa?
/vaguely remembered anatomy from helping my OH revise for exams
Fruitbat: There is no proper name for the back of the knee.
I named it Steve
More of a gradual unearthing than one big one.
It was surprised to see a large bulk vessel, the [url= http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/details/ships/shipid:5429/mmsi:230613000/imo:9381706/vessel:ALPPILA ]Alppila[/url] unloading coal next to my office and over the wall from the little marina with the sailing boats.
Turns out that we're at one end of this system of underground coal silos, serving the power station 500m away. The little pointy up bit at the top right is what the coal is unloaded into.
[img] http://www.getunderground.fi/getfile.ashx?cid=204307&cc=3&refid=5 [/img]
If you're in a cold snowy place, keeping your coal out in the open causes a few problems, so sticking it underground seems like a a good idea, but expensive, right? Not necessarily:
Coal Storage Silos in bedrock were built with the price that the City of Helsinki got by selling the former Coal heap area for building ground to private companies. Average price of underground space is only 100 €/m3, including excavation, rock reinforcement, grouting and underdrainage.
more (will download a 2.2MB pdf) www.energiaklubi.fi/energiaklubi_site/mediafiles/pdf-documents/Energy_days/Salmisaari_Power_Plants.pdf
That got me onto more about underground stuff in Helsinki, including this: which I need to visit while I'm here:
[img] 
?1302792129[/img]
And what they're doing with the excavated rock. Compare this with google maps of the city today:
The boat, the Alppila, came here from the Vysotsk terminal situated on Vysotsk island in the Gulf of Finland, which handles steam coal exported from the Kuzbass (Kuznetsk) region of SW Siberia. So I'm going to be heated by coal from here: Novokuznetsky District, Kemerovo Oblast, Russia 53.644888, 87.923694 (co-ordinates are "ish")
http://global.britannica.com/place/Kuznetsk-Coal-Basin
Popliteal Fossa?/vaguely remembered anatomy from helping my OH revise for exams
Well that must have been invented since Vivian Stanshall's seminal work, Sir Henry at Rawlison End.
- Google uses enough energy to continuously power 200,000 homes
- Google accounts for roughly 0.013 percent of the world’s energy use
- One Google search is equal to turning on a 60W light bulb for 17 seconds
- One year of Gmail is as efficient as a message in a bottle
- Google’s carbon footprint is zero (after offsets)
[url= http://techland.time.com/2011/09/09/6-things-youd-never-guess-about-googles-energy-use/ ]Source[/url]
Our uni lecturer said that there's no such thing as a straight line, it is just a circle with an infinite radius therefore nothing is truly straight in nature.
She was too scary to debate with (and probably correct)
Our uni lecturer said that there's no such thing as a straight line it is just a circle with an infinite radius therefore nothing is truly straight in nature.
Of course there is, there's lots of examples of straight lines.
You should have drawn one like this and showed her.
[img] 
[/img]
I can't see a circle with an infinite radius there ^
Your uni lecturer was talking bollox. What else did she tell you ?
Our uni lecturer said that there's no such thing as a straight line it is just a circle with an infinite radius therefore nothing is truly straight in nature
Utter codswallop.
Every fule knoweth that it is an arc with infinite radius.
[quote=bikebouy dijo]The word "Factoid" is only used by morons.
Factoid.
Actually "fact[url= https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-oid ]oid[/url]" means "something which resembles a fact, but is not a fact".
Fact
Nah, my ruler is pretty straight. No circles there.
I use it to measure my popliteal fossa. you know, the name for the back of the knee.
DrP
I herd that cows produce more greenhouse gas than cars
Canada is around 41 times the size of the UK but has about 1/2 the population.
my popliteal fossa. you know, the name for the back of the knee.
Popliteal fossa?? What's sort of name is that ffs?
Head, ears, feet, shoulders, chest, mouth, ........ popliteal fossa?? You're having a laugh.
There is no proper name for the back of the knee.
Or the back of the hand.
That Canada should take more migrants...
Or the back of the hand.
I call it the 'anti-palm'
DrP
My favorite medical term by a long shot is the.... [url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gubernaculum ]Gubernaculum[/url]
Love it!
Our uni lecturer said that there's no such thing as a straight line it is just a circle with an infinite radius therefore nothing is truly straight in nature
Utter codswallop.
Every fule knoweth that it is an arc with infinite radius.
what total balls. The first bit that is. Arc (even if you forgive her that bit) with an infinite radius [b]is[/b] a straight line. Anything less than a straight line and it's an arc with a finite radius. Quite how you get a "therefore..." out of a definition, I don't know. Nature or not. And what's nature? physics and maths at the end of the day, isn't it?
I call it the 'anti-palm'
Yeah right, that's clearly made up.
What's the back of the head called.........reverse-face ?
Anti-face, surely. Makes perfect sense, especially given what we've just learned about the palm/anti-palm relationship.
Come on ernie, concentrate.
What's the back of the head called
About face obvs.
Remind me, what's the back of the stomach/trunk called?
Think about it....!
DrP
Bob Holness is Prince Harry's real dad
Hey DrP, I'll trade your anti-palm and popliteal fossa for opisthenar and knee-pit 😉
Bob Holness is Prince Harry's real dad
He might have been but he's dead now.
Playing Baker Street to a celestial audience in the sky.
I am looking at Helsport Varanger 12-14 - we need a few at work... Worth checking out other prices on Scandi products..
That the world's first commercial maglev train system was in Birmingham 1984 .Shame they didn't stick with it we could all have been commuting to work at 300mph
It had a bit of a flaw - if the power cuts then the train just drops onto the track and stops completely dead. I was the birmingham onewhen it did that once, luckily it just as we were slowing up and almost stopped for the platform but it was enough to throw everyone onboard on the floor, even a second or two earlier it would have been a pretty serious accident. I presume at any speed, let alone 300mph the problem with maglev is suddenly not levitating.
The world is [i]ON[/i] course to eliminate extreme poverty in the next 15 years.
The French do not have a word for nuts 😀
Remind me, what's the back of the stomach/trunk called?
The Otherwise Central Zone?