soubriquet
-
Content Count
5352 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by soubriquet
-
-
Very fresh this morning. Quilt was nice last night. Had to put on socks for the first time this morning.
-
No, I filched it. The maths is elementary; I lack the imagination
Soubriquette pointed out that men like trouble..
-
-
Originally Posted By: GreenroomeBy the sounds of it, most of you guys use oil heaters. Am I gonna go broke using my (brand new) gas heater? I thought it was a plus when I took the joint. Gas is cheap in Aus. I got a little electric blower unit. Use that instead? I don't dig the kero stink.
Gas is ideal, better than kero and much better than electricity. Like GN, we have central heating. The memsahib ran it for the first time last night. I have a kero heater in the garage, where it belongs.
Any live flame is going to create condensation. Typically:
4O2 + CH4 ----> CO2 + 2H2O + heat -
Those who have been through previous bubbles knew this one would burst, just like all the others.
-
Not so much a question as an observation from No1 son. "The rain clouds have gone and the sun clouds have come".
-
Don`t think so.
The first episode had a young lad on his first day at a new school correcting the Physics teacher (....there are 4 dimensions, not three..).
Said teacher, intrigued, together with fit female companion, visited his "home" address that evening. No home there, just a police box on a bomb site. (Historical note. In the early 1960s, all major UK cities had streets of terraces with gaps piled with rubble. Bomb sites). Knocked on door. Opened by the nutty Doctor.
Enter the Tardis, cue Radiophonic Workshop music, and they were off through the time space continuum. Absolutely gripping stuff for the time.
-
I can clearly remember watching the first episode of Dr Who. I can give you a plot synopsis from memory. It made a big impression on me.
William Hartnell was the man.
-
Hello annan
I'm not sure you will get many serious answers here, but I'll try.
Many (not all) ski areas in Japan are very poorly planned and amateurishly managed. What keeps them alive is the enormous volume of snow they get. Locally we get about 12m of fresh snow per season. That makes up for a lot of deficiencies, but it won't help you in Sweden.
Another thing is the "Japan" experience. It is a big draw for many overseas visitors, and is also welcome for those of us fortunate to live here.
Thirdly, and contrary to popular opinion, away from the major cities Japan is a very inexpensive country. You can have a perfectly acceptable meal and a glass of beer for 1,000 Yen. A day pass may cost 3,000 Yen and an hotel 10,000 Yen.
-
All the Fed has to do is to ask the lenders for details of their bad loans. I'm sure the lenders will have the relevant documents when they front up for their handouts....
As an aside (this comes from the memsahib) post-WWII MacArthur effectively confiscated the property of the Japanese landowners and gave it to the tenant farmers. This was a measure to enhance social stability. MacArthur was a military man, more interested in results than politics and ideology.
-
Perhaps if the 700 billion dollars was spent paying off the sub-prime mortgages of the poor, and returning homes to the dispossessed we might see any of the following. In no particular order.
A lift in the wealth of the nation.
People having a stake in their homes and local communities.
A significant slice of society being given a leg up from being welfare dependent to being property-owning middle class.
But that wouldn't be the capitalist way, would it?
-
Here's an illustration of the value of maths in everyday social situations.
-
Oh ye of little faith!
You might as well ask what was the point of Rutherford researching the sub-atomic structure of matter. Look where that ended up: the vapourisation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
What is the point of art or music?
It is all about intellectual curiosity, the thing that separates us from the hippocrocagrillapigs. Prime numbers are part of Number Theory, which is part of pure maths. Next time you hand over 150 Yen and receive a can of coffee and 30 Yen in change, remind yourself: "what's the point of Number Theory?".
-
You already have the answer: "2".
Two can only be divided by itself and one!
-
2. It's the only prime which is an even number.
-
Your starter for 10. Which prime number is unique?
-
Hazy and cold. Time to swap cotton blankets for the quilt.
-
Cool and sunny in Takasaki.
-
Yep. Food fair time. It's not a bad gig. I get to do a lot of driving, shifting heavy loads and packing boxes of cake. I also get to travel around Japan all expenses paid.
-
Yep, that's it. My day in the mountains looks like being a wet one.
-
Morning from rainy Takasaki.
-
This is Onikobe. It faces east, and is set on the inside rim of a caldera, hence the relative steepness. The main area is on the lower-middle slopes. There is a very nice run along the ridge from right to left, and you can drop off the ridge through the trees. The steep upper run about 1/3 of the way in from the left is unpisted and can be quite choppy
This is the run down the ridge.
Here is the entry to one of the tree runs.
-
If you come up this way, then don't ignore Onikobe in Miyagi. It's smaller than the Appi and Zao, but not small by Tohoku standards. Onikobe certainly has more variey than Appi. It also has the steepest skiing I've come across in Tohoku, as well as some tree-runs if that's your thing.
It gets good snow, and has a nighta.
I'd caution that they shut the upper lifts when it is windy, but them's the breaks.
The whole area was developed by Mitsubishi during the bubble and is well organised. The main hotel is right on the slopes and is very comfortable, nicely appointed, though western style. It has a great spa which looks out over the mountains. There are other places to stay locally though.
-
Originally Posted By: rach
We can still be friends though.
Can I smoke afterwards?
Lehman Brothers
in General off-topic discussions
Posted
Second point first. I don't know enough about the big picture to have an opinion about the industrial conglomerates, other than to know they were broken up in order to hobble their power. I don't think that an argument that landlords of Oishida were a threat to the Allied Powers is sustainable. On the local level, it was definitely an exercise in social engineering. Basically completing the transition from a feudal to a modern society by turning serfs into the property owning middle-class they are now.
Loss of productivity? I think not. Productivity can be measured, and there's no argument. Japan averages 5 tonnes rice/hectare with a single harvest. Thailand: 2.3 tonnes/hectare with two harvests p.a.
Source: http://www.irri.org/science/cnyinfo/japan.asp
I come from a farming background, and can assure you that (this part of) Japan has the most productive agriculture I've ever seen.
If by "loss of productivity" you mean "inefficiency", then that is an economists argument, not a scientists.
Subsidies paid direct to farmers (rather than subsidies paid direct to bankers) have a number of flow on effects which don't show up on the balance sheets.
First is maintenance of the rural infrastructure and ecology. Paddies support herons eat frogs eat mosquito larvae. Rivers are clean and full of fish. Paddies store water during the wet season, slowing runoff, preventing erosion and flooding. Go to broad acre (an ecological disaster in the US/Aus/UK), and there is immediately a cost. It is simply being transferred from the agriculture to some other budget.
Second. Farmers generally don't drive Porsches or drink Bollinger. Rural subsidies flow into the local economy, and support the myriad local businesses. Cutting subsides will bankrupt the rural economies, forcing people off the land to seek work in the cities. Nice one for an economist, forcing wages down and profits up, but not very clever eh?