29th September 2019 - Beds, All Blacks and Battles

Thought for the day:"Sometimes I wake up grumpy. Sometimes I let her sleep."

So, first night in the new bed and it seems okay.. we have a month to test it!!

And today's music brought to you the all Blacks and Michael Jackson ...

Haka - Music Style

Spent some time playing with video yesterday - so I have the video version of the Street Fighting at Mythodea  - walking around the Tross (the town area set up as a vanguard or wagon train for the armies) I was drawn to the town centre or square where a crowd was gathering - and the drummer just beat a slow steady beat - after a while it became clear that there was to be some sort of "once and for all who is in charge of the streets" battle. I saw friends from the Wou Long - now in town in China Town - the Kettles - a street gang and many others ...   I had the camera so I took some snaps... This is the result...

So, Sunday and I had better get some accounts done and get on with it!!


Cheers !

28th September 2019 - Beds and Railtracks

Thought for the day :"Someone asked me what do I know about dwarves? Very little I said ...."

a little bit of music to start the day....

Right here - Right now 

In other news...  I have been telling a tale for many years about the size of the railways in the USA.
Today I found a graphic version so thought I would share for posterity ...  Interestingly- it was on Twitter and caused a furore of reactions - mainly from people who said it was "British" gauge not "English" and similar reactions - nothing about he actual tale!!  Sad this Social Media Stuff!

Anyway - Back to Rail tracks....

A history lesson for people who think that history doesn't matter: What's the big deal about railroad tracks? The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Well, because that's the way they built them in England..and English engineers designed the first US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

So, why did 'they' use that gauge?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England .

You see, that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And what about the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing...

Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's
ss came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)

Now, the twist to the story: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . 

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but they had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. 

The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important?

So, Ancient horse's asses control almost everything and....

CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.

Oh - and of course there is an expert out there who knows that the gauge is also untrue - but never spoil a good story with  the truth !!!

Well I enjoyed that ....

In Other news - the water bed has seen its final days .. Not because it was bad or leaking - but because we are not sure it it is giving the support that we need as we get a little older....

So a day of emptying the water bed was an interesting task... 
Hosepipe down the stairs and out onto the street - I have no idea what the neighbours thought about the water running down the gutters !!

So - sitting here expecting the new DREAMS extra gel mattress - with a 30 day replacement guarantee...  Might have been a little expensive - but worth it if we wake up in the morning without back ache!!!

And now...

Cheers !

27th September 2019 - Rattenpack and Pirates

Thought for the day:"To be Frank, I'd have to change my name."

Time for some more from Mythodea - here we have the Rat Pack - or Das Rattenpack singing "König von Unten" or King of the Underworld....

St Teilo Installation last night and all went very well. Sang the Master's Song and the Visitor's Song and was back home by 9.30pm !!!

Lliedi Royal Ark Mariner Installation this afternoon... Need to do some printing!!

In other news...

Found a video on Facebook from the Pirate event "Brotherhood of the Black" from 2018

Brotherhood of the Black

And so - best get on with some paperwork....

Cheers !

26th September 2019 - Of Soaps and Concerts

Thought for the day :"I quite like meditation, it's better than sitting around doing nothing"

Macpiet Schröder in concert!!

But I caught him at the Mythodea Pre Event Concert..

 and today I decorated another guitar - this one gifted to me by Ian Gent and Francesca

In other stories - I found this rather interesting Soap set.....

There's nothing quite like the smell of the outdoors, especially when you've been dealing with gunpowder, sitting around a campfire, drinking whiskey. Now, that of course sounds like deadly combination, but that's also kind of the point. To live dangerously, to live like a cowboy! If you'd rather live in your McMansion, listening to Kenny G on your Amazon Echo in the bathtub, while lathering your skin with essential oils, you may need this manly soap substitute. It'll make you  smell like a cowboy, without having to experience all of the life-threatening danger of the outdoors.

 The gunpowder, campfire, and whiskey soap is made using coconut oil, avocado oil, castor oil, olive oil, distilled water, sodium hydroxide, fragrance oil, and coloring, the soaps are handmade, come in a pack of 2 bars, and each bar measures 4 inches long x 2.5 inches wide x 1 inch thick. Though, as a result of each soap bar being handmade, there may be slight cosmetic and size/weight differences.

 If you enjoy drinking whiskey and throwing fireworks into a campfire,  this soap's for you! It not only smells awesome, but it also looks awesome. The dark patterned soap with black, red and yellow will never be mistaken for the soft, skin-soothing fruity soaps you're used to in your McMansion. The manly soap looks exactly like it smells, like imminent threat.

The same company, Outlaw Soaps, also makes the FIre In the Hole smell of gunpowder, campfire, and whiskey in other types of soap, including body wash, hand wash, and cologne. Looking for a different kind of manly smell, such as cabin fever (smells like mountains and life on the trail), or gambling (smells like tobacco, whiskey, and leather), then be sure to check out all of their soaps, hand-washes, and colognes   here.

Cheers !

25th September 2019 - Climate and Corruption

Thought for the day :"To the thief who stole my sage, onion and breadcrumbs... You can go and get stuffed..."

As the frustration mounts - Court rules Govt acting illegally, Parliament sits again, as it was "Not Prorogued after all, Boris unapologetic, Corbyn wants a general election - but not yet!! Lib Dems declare that they would repeal article 50 if they get an overall majority (fat chance),....
so...

 and on climate.... 

This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to me for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you are doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.
You say you “hear” us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I don’t want to believe that. Because if you fully understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And I refuse to believe that.

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5C degrees, and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

Maybe 50% is acceptable to you. But those numbers don’t include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of justice and equity. They also rely on my and my children’s generation sucking hundreds of billions of tonnes of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us – we who have to live with the consequences.
To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5C global temperature rise – the best odds given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the world had 420 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide left to emit back on 1 January 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatonnes. How dare you pretend that this can be solved with business-as-usual and some technical solutions. With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone in less than eight and a half years.

There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures today. Because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it.

You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

somehow you can tell she does not like him ...

and at the Climate Summit ...

Still - here are all the Presidents... Cheerful Lot...

In other news - here is an innovation for you ..

Cheers !!

24th September 2019 - Miscellany and illegal Proroging

Thought for the day:"I’ve been bald for years, but I still have my comb. I just can’t part with it."

A miscellany today ...  enjoyed this little set :

In other news - The Vlammeder Aadlers  (Flaming Eagles from Belgium) found this chocolate sweet at the last event and it appealed to the childish nature in them ... Now they want a Song about eh Dickmann's  Ho Hum - have to put my mind to it !!

Climate control is in the news at the moment - and of course those who made fun of the youngsters for demonstrating while making use of lots of "non-Green" behaviour are now being venomously attacked on Social Media...  I do not follow football and really know little about football players of commentators other than Gary Lineker advertisign Walkers Crisps, but was listening to a discussion with Mr Lineker where he was comparing the tribal nature of football fans and the tribal nature that is developing among those on social media...  "Be in my team or hate and vitriol will be extended to you and everything you stand for " It seemed very true - just look at Brexit and now this reaction to climate change. The number of "if you believe this or support this then just unfriend me immediately" appearing fr many different theses is increasing expotentially in my humble opinion. 

Bt on the subject of whether we are "Green" or not - this little snippet came up and is so true...

   

And in other news - one of the memes going around was pick a number and I will answer the question about songs...  The answer seemed far more simple tome...

 and this just made me laugh ..

OOPS!

 And on the subject of grammar and pedanticism...

And if you suffer from Arachnophobia...  something to think about...

Breaking News - Proroging was illegal - interesting times
(Guardian)

The supreme court has ruled that Boris Johnson’s advice to the Queen that parliament should be prorogued for five weeks at the height of the Brexit crisis was unlawful.

The judgment from 11 justices on the UK’s highest court follows an emergency three-day hearing last week that exposed fundamental legal differences over interpreting the country’s unwritten constitution.

The first legal question the judges had to resolve was whether the prime minister’s decision – exploiting residual, royal prerogative powers – was “justiciable” and could consequently be subjected to scrutiny by the courts. The English high court declined to intervene; the Scottish appeal court concluded that judges did have legal authority to act.

Lawyers for the Scottish claimants and for the businesswoman and campaigner Gina Miller argued that, in suspending parliament, Johnson was motivated by an “improper purpose” – namely avoiding parliamentary control over his policies. MPs and peers, they urged, should be recalled this week.

Government lawyers told the court, which sits in Westminster directly opposite parliament, that the justices should not enter into such a politically sensitive area, which was legally “forbidden territory” and constitutionally “an ill-defined minefield that the courts are not properly equipped to deal with”.

Despite torrential rain, the first members of the public began queueing outside for seats in the supreme court at 5.20am on Tuesday eager to be present for the historic decision.

The decision was read out by Lady Hale, the president of the supreme court. Unusually, none of the parties were provided with advance copies of the judgment due to its extreme sensitivity. Only seven of the 11 justices who heard the case were present in court on Tuesday.

And that about wraps up my Tuesday ..
Cheers !