Interesting reads
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@antipodean said in Interesting reads:
@snowy said in Interesting reads:
@jegga Braver (or stupider) man than me. I would like this quantified "didn’t break down much"...
For a TVR, or just didn't break down much?
Yes I should have qualified that -"for a TVR".
It is unfair to compare their reliability to other vehicles, just other TVRs.
Mostly the ones with Lucas electrics. Lucas being the "Prince of Darkness". -
The current record holder sounds like a complete sociopath, agree there’s a Netflix doco to be made out of this
'World's Greatest' Car Salesman Refuses to Relinquish Title Without Proof
For over four decades, Joe Girard has held the Guinness World Record for the most automotive sales in a single year. The 89-year-old retiree is so proud of his achievement that his own website proclaims him as the greatest retail salesman in history while simultaneously urging you to purchase his...
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@jegga said in Interesting reads:
The White Darkness: A Journey Across Antarctica
At fifty-five, Henry Worsley began a solitary trek that became a singular test of character.
Fuck. Kind of depressing to lose such a man in those circumstances - but the achievements and adventure...
Go doing what you love I suppose. Pack in the adventures you can.
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A piece on the Opioid epidemic in the US. One quote:
"It is tempting to wonder if, in the future, today’s crisis will be seen as generated from the same kind of trauma, this time in reverse. If industrialization caused an opium epidemic, deindustrialization is no small part of what’s fueling our opioid surge."
Americans Invented Modern Life. We Use Opioids to Escape It.
The scale and darkness of this epidemic is a sign of a civilization in a more acute crisis than we knew.
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@nta that was good, and very depressing at the same time. I find myself thinking more and more about the world we have created for ourselves, and what it's going to result in for our children.
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@mariner4life yeah but the US is kind of fucked for these reasons. As the author states: denying people basic privileges and social fabric ultimately costs more in the long run.
Does put the school shootings stuff into perspective tho: a few kids in school per year plus tens of thousands of other gun deaths is still outweighed massively by overdoses and other health issues that regular people can't afford.
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@nta said in Interesting reads:
@mariner4life yeah but the US is kind of fucked for these reasons. As the author states: denying people basic privileges and social fabric ultimately costs more in the long run.
Does put the school shootings stuff into perspective tho: a few kids in school per year plus tens of thousands of other gun deaths is still outweighed massively by overdoses and other health issues that regular people can't afford.
It's just one element but therein lies the major flaw in the user pays system. The US in particular doesn't appear to be particularly keen on a national health system, and it is just one more way that the gap between the haves and have nots is widening. Just like you see in war torn parts of the world, once people get too downtrodden they lose their sense of decency or morality through denial of basic human needs. Then you wonder why they break into your house and steal your 60 inch TV
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@mariner4life A future I fear will be more bleak as we automate and find out we can't all make coffee, cut each other's grass and provide home loan advice.
Particularly now you can't get opiates in Australia without prescription.
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@nta said in Interesting reads:
@jegga said in Interesting reads:
At fifty-five, Henry Worsley began a solitary trek that became a singular test of character.
Fuck. Kind of depressing to lose such a man in those circumstances - but the achievements and adventure...
Go doing what you love I suppose. Pack in the adventures you can.
I know it's that kind of spirit that got man further, but part of me thinks his quest was selfish and his family will pay the price as he is no longer in their lives to fulfill his responsibilities as husband and father
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Looking at my NZ primary school report cards, I’m convinced if I had been born three, four, five decades later in the United States, I’d have been prescribed ritalin or some kind of mind-altering behavioural drug cocktail.
THE DRUGGING OF THE AMERICAN BOY
By the time they reach high school, nearly 20 percent of all American boys will be diagnosed with ADHD. Millions of those boys will be prescribed a powerful stimulant to "normalize" them. A great many of those boys will suffer serious side effects from those drugs. The shocking truth is that many of those diagnoses are wrong, and that most of those boys are being drugged for no good reason—simply for being boys. It's time we recognize this as a crisis.Full read here:
The Drugging of the American Boy
One in seven American boys will be diagnosed with ADHD before they're 18. But is there really a need to give psychotropic drugs to boys just for being boys?
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@salacious-crumb I know a kid who was in that group. Precocious, cheeky, hugely inquisitive, got put on Ritalin but he was just a normal boy. He's a perfectly good young man now, fortunately he got taken off the meds sooner rather than later by his folks
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Sir Roger Bannister died over the weekend - an interesting retrospective.
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Reading an old climbing book and one of the stories was about driving a "gas producer car" (powered by woodfuel) from Dunedin to Mt. Aspiring. I'd never heard of these, but my father knew all about them.
According to this there were more than a million of them running during WWII and mentions them being common in Australia and, presumably, NZ.
Wood Gas Vehicles: Firewood in the Fuel Tank
During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood.
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@chris-b said in Interesting reads:
Reading an old climbing book and one of the stories was about driving a "gas producer car" (powered by woodfuel) from Dunedin to Mt. Aspiring. I'd never heard of these, but my father knew all about them.
According to this there were more than a million of them running during WWII and mentions them being common in Australia and, presumably, NZ.
Wood Gas Vehicles: Firewood in the Fuel Tank
During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood.
Didn’t know we had them here, I’ve seen stories about them in Italy during world war 2.
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@jegga Less popular than in Oz, apparently.
Before the war, a government committee examining petrol substitutes had decided that producer gas was the most practical, and after the war's start worked on details of carbonised coal burning machines. A design was made available to manufacturers, who worked under government licence to required standards of reliability.72 As petrol rationing tightened after the fall of France, several makes of gas producers were advertised, informative articles appeared PAGE 753 in newspapers,73 and there were burners on the running boards or bracketed on to the backs of some cars. In September 1940 the Railways Department began installing on its buses 40 large producers made at the Woburn workshops.74 After Japan's entry, interest increased and by 26 January 1942 about 1800 were in use.75
The machines had problems. Gas gave less power than petrol, hence it was more effective in higher powered engines, in buses, service cars and trucks. Its use demanded more skill, both in driving and in engine care; starting could be tricky, as could intersections and traffic lights. One engineer said that this fuel put a driver back to about 1912 as far as the certainties were concerned but there were no insuperable difficulties for drivers with the necessary mechanical sense. Engines using gas required exacting care and the needed steel plate to make producers was not over-plentiful.76 They were viewed askance by some county and forestry officers because of the fire risk from clinkers and hot ashes deposited by the roadside.77 The rubber shortage of 1942, by making tyres and tubes the chief problem of motorists, lessened enthusiasm for gas producers.78 By the end of March 1943 the Transport Department recorded a total of 1773 cars and 507 trucks fitted with gas producers.79 In May 1943 three manufacturers advertised that producers could then be obtained without a permit, that the rationing of ‘char’ had been altered to allow private motorists up to five hundredweight a month, which was equivalent to about 45 gallons of petrol, and that there was plenty of ‘char’ all over the North Island and in most districts of the South Island.80 In New Zealand most producers used carbonised coal as fuel; some, as in Australia, used charcoal made from various timbers, but the Australian hardwoods made much better charcoal.81 In 1942 a Wellington man patented a new type of gas producer burning raw coal.
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2-2Hom-c16.html
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I was highly amused by this passage in Keith Richards’ autobiography:
[...]
“[Y]ou’re actually seeing the world, and they’re paying you! But my God, there are some black holes.
“Dunedin, for instance, almost the southernmost city in the world, in New Zealand. It looked like Tombstone, and it felt like it. It still had hitching rails. It was a Sunday, a wet dark Sunday in Dunedin in 1965. I don’t think you could have found anything more depressing anywhere. The longest day of my life, it seemed to go on forever. We were usually pretty good at entertaining ourselves, but Dunedin made Aberdeen seem like Las Vegas. Very rarely did everybody get depressed at the same time, there was usually one to support the others. But in Dunedin everybody was totally depressed. No chance of any redemption or laughter. Even the drink didn’t get you pissed. On Sunday, there’d be little knocks on the door, “Er, church in ten minutes…” It was just one of those miserable gray days that took me back to my childhood, a day that will never end, the gloom, and not anything on the horizon. Boredom is an illness to me, and I don’t suffer from it, but that moment was the lowest ebb. “I think I’ll stand on my head, try and recycle the drugs.””
[...]
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@salacious-crumb I think Uncle Keith's chemically damaged memory may be confusing Dunedin with Invercargill.
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@crucial said in Interesting reads:
@salacious-crumb I think Uncle Keith's chemically damaged memory may be confusing Dunedin with Invercargill.
He says they were playing with Roy Orbision. What are the chances The Big O and the Stones played Invercargill? Probably about as good as playing Bluff. Frankly, I was surprised they even played Dunedin to tell you the truth, sure surprised me.
Deadspin | The First Four-Minute Mile, In One Pain-Wracked Photo
