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Post by mrsonde on Jan 15, 2019 1:43:33 GMT 1
(No, not really; but they're all mad, they say.)
I've been using my trusty old Edmund, which generates about 400k, and an engineering whiz friend - now sadly passed on, and sorely missed - rigged up a device with a couple of Tesla coils to give me reasonably good control, and good modulation ability in ELF, but it's not precise enough.
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 15, 2019 11:21:43 GMT 1
Can anyone make head or tail of this so-called Berkow plot? It strikes me as a florid fantasy from May and her incompetent whips, like most of the Project Fear stories*, or a plot-line from the last season of Homeland. I'm beginning to think she might be mentally ill.
*The Beeb had a good old stand-by yesterday - at least a ten-minute report, apparently in all seriousness, that No Deal will mean a bog-roll drought! A toilet paper mountain, held up at Dover, like another white cliff. I've ordered a few copies of the Withdrawal Agreement, just in case - I don't know where I'm going to stockpile them though. My sheds are already chock-a-block with crisps.
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Post by alancalverd on Jan 15, 2019 13:20:41 GMT 1
1. Modern bog roll consists of two layers. The top comes from Swedish soft pulp: I doubt that the Swedes will be pleased to see 10% of their market disappear out of spite, so they will probably conspire with BMW (the UK being 20% of their market) to ensure that a few Eurocrats fall down stairs until they start exporting again. The other half is Brazilian hard pulp - presumably cheaper under WTO than EU import tariffs. So we might have to resort to Bronco for a few weeks but I'm sure Andrex will reappear very quickly.
In my days as a trade union rep, I was mandated to press for soft bog rolls in civil service establishments. Wonderful experience, dealing with shop, branch, district and national conferences on this vital issue. The resolution was finally amended by a guy from Admiralty, Ships, Bath (I kid you not - scientists have a very deep sense of humor) who pointed out that the soft stuff was worse than useless on a trawler or minesweeper, but received support from the TUC who threatened HM Government that if it was refused, it would become Labour Party policy anyway. So HMG agreed to replace the hard stuff with soft as the stocks ran down, except for Ships, Small. Three years later I was tasked to enquire just how much of the bloody hard stuff was left. "phone Hangar 2, Staverton" was the answer. Yes, folks, in those days governments were prepared for anything and the MoD had a standing thousand tons of Bronco (with every sheet labelled Government Property) "just in case".
The real worry, of course, is a shortage of Swedish medium pulp for government correspondence. If they can't send out tax bills, they'll find some way to expedite the imports.
2. Let's have a proper specification for your HV unit. Voltage, current, waveform and precision. I'll see what can be done.
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 15, 2019 14:24:39 GMT 1
1. Modern bog roll consists of two layers. The top comes from Swedish soft pulp: I doubt that the Swedes will be pleased to see 10% of their market disappear out of spite, so they will probably conspire with BMW (the UK being 20% of their market) to ensure that a few Eurocrats fall down stairs until they start exporting again. The other half is Brazilian hard pulp - presumably cheaper under WTO than EU import tariffs. So we might have to resort to Bronco for a few weeks but I'm sure Andrex will reappear very quickly. In my days as a trade union rep, I was mandated to press for soft bog rolls in civil service establishments. Wonderful experience, dealing with shop, branch, district and national conferences on this vital issue. The resolution was finally amended by a guy from Admiralty, Ships, Bath (I kid you not - scientists have a very deep sense of humor) who pointed out that the soft stuff was worse than useless on a trawler or minesweeper, but received support from the TUC who threatened HM Government that if it was refused, it would become Labour Party policy anyway. So HMG agreed to replace the hard stuff with soft as the stocks ran down, except for Ships, Small. Three years later I was tasked to enquire just how much of the bloody hard stuff was left. "phone Hangar 2, Staverton" was the answer. Yes, folks, in those days governments were prepared for anything and the MoD had a standing thousand tons of Bronco (with every sheet labelled Government Property) "just in case". The real worry, of course, is a shortage of Swedish medium pulp for government correspondence. If they can't send out tax bills, they'll find some way to expedite the imports. Is "Bronco" the greaseproof slip-slidey stuff they used to discourage us with at school? The ideal stuff for civil servants - the EU should make it mandatory. Ex-civil servants especially. That'll teach 'em to scupper Brexit. Thanks, Alan, much appreciated. Unfortunately, that would likely be beyond my capabilities, I fear - I regret that my elec.engineer friend died last year, and although I know broadly what he did, he gave me no specs. What I want is to be able to program my modulating device (ideally, I'd like to continue using my Edmund rather than invest in another generator) with, say, 355,000V (the voltage isn't the important thing, of course, but the field strength is - at the moment I judge and alter this by distance, which isn't ideal) with, say, a 9.8 Hz pulse.
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Post by alancalverd on Jan 17, 2019 1:51:31 GMT 1
Unable to find any reference to Edmund in the context of high voltage, but I've spent some time watching BBC Parliament these last two days.
Frankly, what's the point? Members either had or hadn't read the offending document, nobody raised any new information or questioned the detail of the agreement, and it wasn't clear that anyone's sixth-form rhetoric was going to sway anyone else's vote - if anything, pointing out the lamentable record of the party opposite (in either direction) on all sorts of irrelevant topics, was only going to harden their resolve. So why not just vote instead of spending a day in Party posturing?
Predictably, they voted against the May document. But what on earth was the point of a no confidence motion? Again the outcome was predetermined by the DUP agreement, and if it had been passed, any subsequent general election would not have resolved the principal issue since the major parties are both divided and parliament has in any case resolved to do Brexit by some means, so it isn't a party issue. Given the necessary 25 days or whatever to have said election, and maybe a week to cobble a government together thereafter, the effective result for Brexit could only be a Labour Plan A or a Tory Plan B, neither of which actually exists, to be executed in less than 50 days.
It's pretty obvious that Plan B has got to be full withdrawal and implementation of WTO terms, which will be binding on any future government, so the rational thing to do would be to set up a proper, visible crossparty commission to draft the legislation and organise the civil service to meet the demand, whilst encouraging Mrs M to do whatever she can to renegotiate Plan A. Instead of which people stood up and talked about hospital waiting times, literacy, nuclear weapons, and just about every conceivable irrelevance, for two days.
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 17, 2019 10:37:41 GMT 1
Unable to find any reference to Edmund in the context of high voltage The best Van de Graaff ever made. I know, I've tried most of the alternatives over the past 30 years. Unfortunately, they were taken over some years ago, and nothing they now make comes close to the robustness and reliability of their old models. Like the Volvo 240 and anything they've made since. I've come to the same feeling of ennui and despair myself. As I remarked a little while ago, Plan B is to so exhaust the Leave side that we give in, unable to raise the animal spirits to make yet again the same arguments against their fallacious soundbites. We're now clearly at that point, where the Remainers feel free to state the policy in the open: Rule out No Deal, definitively. Then hold another referendum. I've yet to here one journalist with the perspicacty to ask: if you've ruled out No Deal, what's the question? Remain - or the Deal Parliament has just rejected by a historic margin? Yes, says Plaid and the SNP - rule out No Deal, first, says Corbyn, and then I might tell you. Corbyn boxed himself into it. You'd have had a leadership election first. Whoever won would have a legitimate Party mandate to put his or her Brexit policy forward in the manifesto. Stand on it or don't, but that's the policy. The majority of the Tory membership are firmly in favour of No Deal - if Boris got through to the final round, against Rudd would be my bet, he'd easily win. To get to that point, the question is what degree of pressure the constituency chairpeople would exert on their MPs to support Boris' proposal - that is, a managed No Deal being the starting point, followed by a Free Trade period wherein a Canada ++ deal would be negotiated in the ensuing ten years. I think this policy, firmly argued and finally given a fair hearing, would persuade a sizeable majority - and the EU would go along with it, with relief, with the proviso no doubt we "paid our debt." Ha! A second referendum is a virtual certainty now, I'd say. A50 will be extended, before anything happens. By early next week, imo. If the Hammond leak (an obvious plant, unless newspapers have taken to bugging the Chancellor's phone these days) is true, this option will be ruled out by Monday. There's one glimmer of hope: Corbyn has adopted a strategy that might give May the wriggle room to deny him what he's demanding. Not many of her Party, even firm Remainers, will want to see her being seen to concede to what looks like extortion. Can't be done - unless No Deal is ruled out. Corbyn is either being his usual incompetent cackhanded self, or he's played a blinder: nothing to do with us, guv. It's not an inspiring display, this whole mess - I'd guess the public respect for politicians, and our system in general, is at the lowest ebb it's ever been in history, including after the Somme or Munich. This is the unseen "catastrophic" damage people like Heseltine, Clarke, Blair, Clegg, Cable etc. have really wrought, possibly irrevocably.
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Post by alancalverd on Jan 17, 2019 11:21:34 GMT 1
Ah, that Edmund. The problem is that it is very dificult to vary the voltage of a VdG quickly - most have an inherent time constant of several seconds or even minutes. But if you just want to vary the field at a given point, you can wobble the spacing of the electrodes or interpose a dielectric.
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 17, 2019 11:37:47 GMT 1
Ah, that Edmund. The problem is that it is very dificult to vary the voltage of a VdG quickly - most have an inherent time constant of several seconds or even minutes. But if you just want to vary the field at a given point, you can wobble the spacing of the electrodes or interpose a dielectric. Yes - that's more or less the problem my friend solved, with his cobbled together dual Tesla coil device. He really was a genius - one of those Dick Strawbridge types, with a seemingly inexhaustible capacity to do anything practical. My problem is the accuracy required, I've since discovered, exceeds the spec he built it to: or I'd like it to. I think. To a large extent I'm working in the dark, to be honest. It may be that a third modulation is required - hence my need for greater precision. But your suggestion of a dielectric is a promising one, that hadn't occurred to me. Mica? I've got a beautiful sheet of that. somewhere. Thanks a lot, most sincerely.
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 17, 2019 12:38:44 GMT 1
An excellent interview with Blair this morning on Today. Whatever else he is, he's always had a clear grasp on this whole Brexit process, and I've rarely heard anyone, on either side, summarise the essential questions so concisely. As I said at the very beginning, the vote means we leave on WTO, and negotiate from there - the EU was always going to force her into that position, and she should have adopted it from the start, as a strength rather than a fear - or we won't leave at all: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00021q52:10 to 2:28. And so now the question is what it always was, given this inexorable logic: How do we avoid or mitigate as far as possible this so-called "catastrophe" to our economy, if indeed it is one at all? That's what she should have been negotiating for two years. Instead, because she's deliberately run down the clock, making the "catastrophe" quite possibly a self-fulfilling prophecy, we're left with this only other way out: another referendum. Did she, or her Civil Service advisors in the Treasury, intend this all along? It makes you wonder. Is she incredibly, deviously, clever; or is she really as incompetent and stubbornly stupid as she otherwise appears? Either way, she's deeply deceptive and dishonest, with the people as much as her party.
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 17, 2019 12:59:08 GMT 1
It's worth repeating why this is the case (it's contingently, not at all necessarily, so) because no one - no journalist, or commentator, and even Brexiteer politicians - ever points this basic fact any longer. The EU will not give us what we want, and what May has been trying to work out - have our cake and so forth - because if they do: what is the point of this hugely expensive overweening political monster that is the EU? We're holding a knife to their very throat. Do free trade with us, have a reasonable relationship where we recognise and respect each other's market standards, and work out any problems in our courts, and that's all that's required, for both our great benefit - and why should the EU exist at all?
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 17, 2019 14:28:30 GMT 1
My goodness, Ronnie's on top form today. If anyone wants to see the greatest snooker player that's ever lived - the greatest genius of a sportsman that's ever lived, I think, with the possible exception of Bobby Fischer - at the peak of his powers (at 43!) take the afternoon off and watch the master at play.
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Post by alancalverd on Jan 28, 2019 19:37:44 GMT 1
Back to Brexit. The Beeb has been telling me all day that supermarket shelves will be empty on 30 March, but an interviewed Dutch vegetable grower said 15% of their produce is exported to the UK. What are they going to do with it? AFAIK there are no tariffs on exports, and it is entirely up to the UK government to decide what tariffs if any to put on imported food, so what's the problem? WTO specifies maximum tariffs, not minimums.
Also suggested in various quarters: a hard border in Ireland will encourage criminals to come to the UK. Why won't they cross a soft border?
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 29, 2019 11:24:45 GMT 1
Footprints.
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Post by alancalverd on Jan 29, 2019 12:31:10 GMT 1
If trade with Europe will cease in 8 weeks' time, why are the headless chickens contracting (at my expense) to rent more ships (from a company that doesn't have any - but let's not get bogged down in details)?
Massive queues at the ports? According to WTO guidelines, 3 - 5% of trucks on regular contract runs should be inspected. If they are on a ship, you have a couple of hours (from Calais) or even overnight (Santander) to do that. Or the best part of an hour on a train. If you want to prevent illegal immigration, you need 100% inspection anyway. What on earth have Customs & Excise and Border Force been doing (at my expense) all these years?
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Post by jonjel on Jan 29, 2019 12:37:50 GMT 1
Well I am digging a shelter in my garden, have ordered a truck load of barbed wire, ammunition for the shotgun and the half ton of tinned food is being delivered next week.
I reckon that with a pedal powered generator I can still run by business from there, and still export all over the world.
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