Just providing a link to the source for that one.. Randall (xkcd) is an entertaining guy.

https://xkcd.com/386/

So unlike the respect shown by English football fans to other countries' national anthems.

The concept of basic decorum has disappeared from public society. Appalling behavior, all around.

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Something they should bring back, although it never officially was something of the Olympics... just we wish it was: Duelling Pistol Shooting. :)

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Rio incident

Wonder if their passports will get seized also?

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This is the 21C, and drugs, money, and crime have marred it all. The IOC are dodgy themselves with allegations of bribery. Welcome to the modern world.

Yeah, no kidding. When it gets to the point where you can not tell the truth about a situation because it might be perceived as biased, discriminatory or bigoted, things like this become unavoidable.

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I won't await to see the death of the diesel with this new "innovation", and I still say that a simple petrol engine will always win out.

Q. Anyone remember the Wankel engine? A typical example of people throwing money at a design concept just to prove it worked for their own egos. Did it ever take of commercially?

A. No, rotor sealing problems finished it.

Next?

Remember the Wankel well. IIRC, that was the engine that Mazda staked their entry into the US market on, a spectacular failure because it was all happening around the time of the first Oil Crisis, and irrespective of other issues, the rotary design wasn't competitive in terms of fuel efficiency. I think at least 20% less efficient than more conventional gas powered even then. It also was a comparatively dirty burning engine, so there were EPA issues here. I do have to wonder if anyone has revisited that concept recently, given advances in materials and electronic controls.

Still trying to understand how it was that Diesel fuel ended up about the same cost as regular gasoline, when it used to be less than half the cost here. Diesel electric was a rousing success for locomotives, and could be for autos if it were not for the fact that we still demand gas engine acceleration performance. Will be interesting to see if this new approach could resolve that ...
Ultimately, what the gas engine has going for it is only a century of development over other approaches. Hard to beat that head start.

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They might have low end pulling power for heavy loads such as towing caravans up hills but generally they are not happy at high speeds. And in recent years the fuel companies cashed in and now Diesel is more expensive than petrol. It is only in recent years that modern diesel fuels don't emulsify in winter causing all sorts of problems.

I won't await to see the death of the diesel with this new "innovation", and I still say that a simple petrol engine will always win out.

I don't remember you saying that when you were a passenger in my diesel car, and commented on the low revs at high speed (close to the legal maximum in this country), and very slow rate of fuel consumption.

The cubic capacity of the engine is really irrelevant - slightly greater use of raw materials during construction, and possibly slightly greater congestion in car parks, but I can't think of any other downsides.

The price of fuel is largely manipulated according to changing global fashions. Diesel was cheaper when the major concern was depletion of global oil reserves (because they drink less of the stuff), and again when the major pollutant of concern was carbon dioxide (similarly, less fuel in means less carbon out). Now that the major pollution concern has switched to NOx and particulates, pricing policy has changed too.

My major reason for switching to diesel cars in the first place (some 25 years ago) was to avoid starting problems caused by electric spark plug ignition for cars left parked outdoors in a damp climate. They've probably overcome that by now, but it isn't a pressing reason to switch back now I've got used to diesel. The last time I drove a small-capacity petrol engine (courtesy loan while my car was being serviced), it felt like I was riding an angry wasp - had to drop so many gears, and boost the revs so high, just to get up the hills before sunset.

... be quite economical in fuel use ...

That reminds me - I've got a long trip to plan for next month, so I'd better fill up sometime. I've done round trips to both coasts (Heysham and Whitby), and sundry other local runs, since I last visited a gas station in mid-July. Google maps makes the cross-country work alone about 350 miles, and I'm not even on reserve yet.

I can't remember whether your remarks were specifically made in my earlier (orange) or current (silver) model, which to my taste is slightly underpowered in comparison. The orange one I ran for 10 years from new, and I remember deliberately specifying an optional-extra diesel particulate filter when I ordered it: I think they might be standard on the newer model. So I think that diesel engines, especially when not stuck in city traffic, have moved on a long way from their smoky agricultural stereotype.

Compromise - the success of the many British teams in these Olympics has been a spectacular vindication of the benefits of public funding - in this case, funds contributed directly by the members of the public you see queuing in front of lottery terminals every Saturday night, not mediated by taxation and Government distribution.

Camelot should organise and pay for the homecoming parade, and take a justified share of the credit.

(and thus keep the decision well out of the hands of party politicians, of all persuasions. No bandwagon jumpers wanted here.)

If only the Mail, Express, Sun, and the Star ...

And we've got ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN. Same difference... Presstitutes are Presstitutes the world around ...

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The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Yes Sir Humphry know where that quote come's from
Was true back then when the program first aired and still is true over 20 years later :-)

Not just the media. I'm in the middle of an interesting series of conversations with, and about, a UK Public Limited Company - which seems to have adopted the doorstep sales tactics beloved by fraudsters, rather than (as more commonly) the other way round.

Nothing to do with science, and nothing to do with computing (distributed or otherwise), so I won't bore you with it now - but if the Guardian makes a story out of the letter of complaint to the company that they (and my MP) will be receiving a copy of, I may get a small glow of satisfaction out of sharing it here.

I woke up this morning to find Einstein down. This is not a good thing.

At least I have been able to report.

Three hours later Einstein remains in la la land.

Three hours later Einstein remains in la la land.

You did see the explanation posted here by a project staff member - early on a Sunday morning, his time?

Einstein@Home is currently having network trouble. The main Website and forums are down but upload/download and task reporting is still working.

Thanx, no I did not see that.

Or here

Currently we are experiencing problems with https://einsteinathome.org. This is due to a onging network problem between research institutions which use Internet2, basically an ISP for universities and research institutions. There seems to be some problem between connections from the North America to Europe, but only for the institutions themselves. Meaning you and I can connecti from our home computers, but the computers at the research institutions cannot connect to each other.

Because the Einstein At Home project uses computers at both UW-Milwaukee and Albert Einstein Institute, at University of Hanover, and the connection between them has problems, our project is experiencing these network problems.

Currently we don't have a estimate on when the network issue will be fixed. Sorry about the inconvenience.

As the Seti is not down, am i hijacking the thread? Discuss.

... so I pledge to try to make sure that we try to keep the cafe & politics separate.

+1

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