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Some of the richest oil reserves in the world are THOUGHT to lie under the seabed around the Falklands. Companies have been prospecting there for years. But the sea is much deeper than in other areas where offshore oil is drilled, so the technical difficulties of extracting any oil that might be found would need to be overcome.
Whether possible oil reserves is anything to do with the propersed Ascension Island limit, I have no idea.
Green taxation is fine as long as it’s applied to energy saving and generally beneficial projects.
Saving energy and moving to renewable energy are crucial as the supply of finite resources begins to dwindle, as it will.
I saw a case of a creationist working as a science teacher in a state school on TV – he was being interviewed by Richard Dawkins.
Religion should be treated the same as politics. Religion should not be beyond criticism, and now that the blasphemy law that protected Christianity and (I think, Judaism) has been repealed, it’s open season for shooting down religious myths.
There is so much to criticise about religion as a whole and individual religions that it’s difficult to know where to begin! The reasons that religions are so touchy about criticism is because so many of their basic ‘truths’ don’t stand up to rational analysis, coupled to the fact that for many people, their religion is tied up with their identity and often their ethnicity too. Jews managed to tie their religion up with ethnicity quite successfully, as did Northern Ireland catholics (i.e. they weren’t of Scottish ancestry like most of the Prods) and muslims in the west can hide behind the ‘white on non-white’ racism barrier when it suits them.
Critiscism or ridicule of a religion is OK in itself as long as it doesn’t cross the line to become inciting hatred of people who follow that religion
Religions seem to reserve the word ‘truth’ to apply to their biggest lies. I am an atheist!!
Religious people can criticise atheism all they like (although that just highlights their irrationality) but that’s different from inciting hatred of atheists.Lots of people have ‘sacred cows’ that are beyond reproach. Someone I know goes absolutely ballistic if anyone makes light of anything to do with Winston Churchill, like any pastiches of ‘never have so many……”
Bathing cats is not something to undertake lightly. I had to do that once. Although the cats didn’t like it, it didn’t harm them and I was unharmed too but the wallpaper wasn’t!!!
PS I didn’t bath the cats for fun, it was to apply a special shampoo for combatting fleas and lice as they both had skin allergies to these pests. Done on vet’s advice.
Even if his personal behaviour had always been cleaner than clean, I fail to see why anyone would ever have become a fan of Gary Glitter!!
Concerning another well-known former pop star who was jailed for committing crimes against children and still protests his innocence – back in the 70’s, there were ‘hearsay’ stories doing the rounds at school about the sort of things he got up to that were consistent with the crimes he was later jailed for. Sort of like…..’My friend’s brother was at a party and they went upstairs and in the bedroom they found……..’ kind of thing.
Someone else drew the parallel with Leslie Grantham, a convicted murderer, and how he was hired by the BBC as a bad guy. Nobody who has committed a serious violent or sexual crime should ever have any place in public life.
He deserves to have very close tabs kept on him wherever he goes and comes across as an extremely unpleasant old man even leaving aside the evil things he’s done.
It occurred to me that if he’d chosen a career in a more hard-edged sector of the pop industry, rather than glam-rock poputainment for teenyboppers – say punk, death metal or gansta-rap, Glitter’s notoriety might have been less of a barrier or even boosted his career. After all, Sex Pistols music is still played although one of the group (Sid Vicious) was a murderer.
or wood burners if we mined the sawdust ?
I also seem to remember reading that some early work as done on making diesel engines run on finely powdered coal dust. I’m talking about large, slow-revving stationary engines, not ones in vehicles. Fine, dry sawdust would probably work in one of these old engines too, but injecting a powder in accurate amounts under high pressure is probably more difficult than with a liquid.
Another snippet for tekkies is that someome is working on a 6-stroke (yes six stroke) diesel/steam engine. The first 4 strokes of the cycle are the normal diesel cycle of suck-squeeze-bang-blow, On the 5th stroke another injector injects water into the cylinder, which instantly turns to steam and pushes the piston down again, while the 6th stroke drives the steam out again. The idea is use a closed loop condensing system with no water loss.
The biggest snag is apparently contamination of the water by engine oil and vice versa.Re. the earlier toys / pram interface earlier on, it shows how factional wars start. I mean, the two of us were in agreement about biodiesel and renewable energy, the war was started over a disagreement about the safety of commercially available DIY biodiesel processors. But these things mus be subject to safety tests before they are allowed to be sold and people using them need to know what they’re doing – just like with chainsaws, electric welders, pottery kilns or a whole host of other gadgets that are can be bought for home use.
Also – and I admit I might be wrong on this – I believe that some German designed diesel engines are designed to run on pure, non-transesterified veg-oil without damage. The oil still needs filtering, obviously, but no further treatment.
But put it in a Renault, Land Rover, Peugeot, Vauxhall or a Ford (even one built in Germany) and you’re asking for gummed up injectors and a very big bill, though. Don’t try at home, seek further advice re law as well as possible damage!!!!
