A thread about nothing at all....

[B.D.F.]

I hope there is some clever, sophisticated humor behind this 'cause it is absolutely flying by me. ?? ??

Brian

Aw crap. This feels like a test.

[just gone]

I hope there is some clever, sophisticated humor behind this 'cause it is absolutely flying by me. ?? ??

Hope springs eternal, but no, nothing clever or sophisticated here, it's pretty much just like the last time. 

HINT: That "Uncle John" guy sure must have been a slow learner. 

[Conniesaki]

Uncle John graduated from West Point at age 124.

[Conniesaki]

Hey! I answered before reading your post, Marty! Promise!

Damn! I actually got the red bar 'warning' that somebody had posted while I was typing!

[mikeyw64]

so why is it we eat a round pizza from a square box and have it cut into triangles?

[B.D.F.]

Which clearly explains why he could not duck out of that Minnie ball's way. Are you people not following this? Do I have to type slower? The man was ancient when he got shot!

Well, OK, maybe I do have to type slower. And think a little quicker.    I guess I am on the slope now, the one that takes most of us from 'normal human' to.... well, a lesser human.

But do not let my bad typing or math get in the way of a cool story, that point of that was that some Confederate sniper took out an enemy from over 1,000 yards away. Long, long way for a shoulder- arm to hit what, a 5" circle or less? Pretty impressive IMO. And that was using a handful of black powder, a cast Minnie ball and iron sights!

And let me throw this one out there: with my better pieces of glass (telescopic sights), on a well- bedded rifle (Easy Boys! not that kind 'o bedding), I can see my own heartbeat as movement between the reticle and the target. Some of the very best long- distance shooters claim they watch the projectile fly.... well, not the actual projectile, but the tube of compressed air around the projectile, and when it is a clean shot, immediately follow it with another (before the wind changes). I would be dubious of this but those people can drop 10 rounds into the bottom of a coffee mug at 5/8 of a mile so that makes me believe it may just be true. The same way Ted Williams claimed it was easy to see what the ball was going to do by watching which way and how fast the stitches were rotating..... again, I would be dubious but the gentleman connected with so very many of the balls thrown at him, at nearly 100 MPH, that maybe he really COULD see the stitching.

Brian

Uncle John graduated from West Point at age 124.

[VirginiaJim]

so why is it we eat a round pizza from a square box and have it cut into triangles?

Geometry

[just gone]

Geometry

Well, speaking of that....

Question:

so why is it we eat a round pizza from a square box and have it cut into triangles?

Answer: We don't. (typically)
Although I've seen it cut into squares ( the goal was squares but usually trapezoids and 4 wedges in reality), pizzas are mostly cut into sections of a circle. Since a triangle by definition needs three straight sides and one side of a pizza slice is typically curved. Personally, if there is no dipping sauce, I eat only the triangle parts of the sections of a circle and discard the handle.

visual aids:

exception square box rule....

section of a circle.....

trapazoidal slices ...
                               

....after typing all of that, I think I like V'Jim's answer better.
I wish I had a basement too. 

[mikeyw64]

or you could just eat calzone

[B.D.F.]

You say that as if that would exclude pizza..... you do have two hands, right? A calzone in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other works, just lean over the sink and let any, er, 'drippings' fall as they may.

Brian

or you could just eat calzone

[mikeyw64]

here's one for you Brian.


I think we can both agree that in tennis & squash the item of equipment you use is called (& spelt) a "racket".


SO why do many US clubs spell it "racquet" in their name?


https://www.google.com/search?q=racquet+clubs+usa

[B.D.F.]

English borrows a lot of words from other languauges provided they can be spelled and pronounced by English speakers. And at the same time, we reject some parts of a word or the word in its entirety, and there does not seem to be any reason or rhyme to the choices. Totally random as far as I can tell. ??

Your very example: Yes, we use a 'racquet' to play tennis but the same device, now called a 'racket' is used to play badminton. As I said, no reason or rhyme that I can discern at all.

A question that <may> have some root answer would be why some countries drive on the right and some on the left. In my opinion, only a handful of countries would be up for discussion because only a handful 'invented' driving in the first place, the rest just followed one or the other.

There was a fantastic TV series on many years ago, a Brit. production called 'Connections' that showed the common thread that wove through time to get us to where we are now regarding some devices, methods and conventions. Really, a great show because it was absolutely not about one person, one event or anything similar, it was about 'real life' and how things really evolved. Because other than the occasional idea or very specific discovery, things are virtually always the result of a chain of events while we humans like to reduce them all to "poof", and there it was. Electric lighting had been around for a long time before Edison, and his was not useful until many years and many, many changes later but history actually states a date on which the 'electric light' was invented. That show Connections showed that things are indeed far, far more complex and convoluted that that.

Brian

here's one for you Brian.


I think we can both agree that in tennis & squash the item of equipment you use is called (& spelt) a "racket".


SO why do many US clubs spell it "racquet" in their name?


https://www.google.com/search?q=racquet+clubs+usa

[mikeyw64]

Originally everyone travelled on the left as that way your sword arm was facing oncoming travellers.

The switch to travelling on he right actually precedes the invention of the car (by some way, talking early 1700's in France & the USA) and can be linked back to the horse & carriage.

When using multiple horses up front it was easier for the carriage driver to sit on the left as that meant his whip arm could be used through the middle of the horses

So that they could see how much clearance they had to passing carriages they started to drive on the right rather than the left

A question that <may> have some root answer would be why some countries drive on the right and some on the left. In my opinion, only a handful of countries would be up for discussion because only a handful 'invented' driving in the first place, the rest just followed one or the other.

[B.D.F.]

Never heard any of this before but it makes sense. Thanks for the info.

I have heard (no valid data) that the origin of the military salute was a Knight raising his visor in the middle ages: he would only do so if he were not going to engage the other(s) Knights, and it has morphed into a sign of comradery and respect.

Brian

Originally everyone travelled on the left as that way your sword arm was facing oncoming travellers.

The switch to travelling on he right actually precedes the invention of the car (by some way, talking early 1700's in France & the USA) and can be linked back to the horse & carriage.

When using multiple horses up front it was easier for the carriage driver to sit on the left as that meant his whip arm could be used through the middle of the horses

So that they could see how much clearance they had to passing carriages they started to drive on the right rather than the left

[B.D.F.]

Check this out:



One would think there was something like plutonium in that box. Sheesh.

Really just several pounds of smokeless powder and a few (hundred) projectiles. Not even a large order. But the HazMat trigger kicks in and all the rules apply no matter how big the order. And I only included the projectiles because I had already paid for shipping to 48 lbs. anyway.

An aside: going to try some light SMK's to see if they will fly for me. The heavier ones, 69 and 77 grains in .224 dia., and the 168 and 175's in .308 have always been spectacular performers but for shorter ranges, I wanted to give some 53 grain projectiles a try as long range stability is not an issue.

All of which brings up another interesting, at least to me, issue: some states are now restricting the sale of reloading components to in- person purchase, a back ground check, being a state resident, and having an FFL holder transfer the components. The short version is that I cannot buy a pound of smokeless powder in the great state of MA due to their zeal for 'safety'. Has anyone, anywhere, ever committed a crime with reloaded ammunition? Firearms violence does not usually start with the reloading of ammunition methinks. Put another way, I just do not see a bunch of gang- bangers, the root of the problem in the murder capitol of the US (the south side of Chicago), or any other high murder rate area, such as Roxbury, MA, getting together in the 'hood for some old- fashioned reloading before going out on the streets to perform murder.

Brian

[B.D.F.]

I guess it had to happen. Drones, the new flying platform that can be adapted to just about everything. Now they are being used, at least in this one case, to fly methamphetamine from Mexico to CA. This is the fifth or sixth trip and the amount was 13 lbs. though I cannot quite tell if that amount was on this last trip or from a combination. The article claims that this has not been a very popular choice in getting drugs across the border so far due to limited range and weight capacity of drones but that is changing pretty rapidly as drone abilities rise with technology.

Drones are also being used to smuggle contraband into prisons apparently.

I think it was less than a year ago the big deal with drones was them hovering over a residential house and taking video of females in bikinis. Ah, the good old, 'pre- felony' days of drone problems. 

All of this is unfortunate because the technology is pretty slick and has a lot of possibilities although clearly some of them were unintended and unforeseen, at least by those of us who do not usually thing in terms of what we might smuggle to where it should not be anyway.

Oh, and BTW: the man charged in this particular smuggling case is a US citizen, for whatever that is worth.

Brian

http://nypost.com/2017/08/19/man-charged-for-using-drone-to-smuggle-13-pounds-of-drugs-from-mexico/

[B.D.F.]

Another difference that has a lot of tentacles and originated for no reason at all that I can find: You (UK) use 50 cycle power with two legs providing 240 volts (I think it is 240). We (US) use 60 cycle power and also have two legs providing 230 volts but with a twist; we also supply what is called a neutral line, which falls between the two legs (yep, put 'between the two legs' joke here- this one is too easy) and we typically use most of our power by using one of the two legs and neutral to provide 115 volts for general, residential use, but also using 230 volt for items that consume large amounts of power, typically more than 1,500 watts or so: clothes dryers, ranges (electric stoves, I believe you call them 'cookers'?), whole- house water heaters. All of this is for residential and small business use; industrial power use such as anything running machine tools uses three phase power of varying voltage in both countries.

Another big difference is that we current- limit our power as it enters our houses, and all circuits are protected against overload there; after that, we get pretty cavalier about what we plug in where (yep more joke material). As I understand it, and I am certainly no authority on UK wiring, but you pretty freely string circuits around a house and then protect the devices plugged into those circuits by fusing the actual plugs themselves.

But back to the power generation: as I said, your power is 50 cycle, ours is 60 cycle and that results in a whole host of difference by accident. It makes no difference for the original electrical devices, incandescent light bulbs, nor other, simple things such as heating devices. But it makes a huge difference in electric motors and many different types of electronics; our motor base speed is 3,600 RPM due entirely to the cyclic rate of our mains power, yours is 3,000 for the same reason. Our entire analog TV system is built around a 60 Hertz (cycles) rate while yours is based on 50 Hertz, making your TVs, videotape and all related materials not interchangeable with ours (our entire system becomes NTSC, while yours is PAL).

Again, there is absolutely no reason or rhyme to this that I know of, it just worked out that way. And it is not much of a problem given that almost no one packs up, say, a house and moves it to the other country. :-)

Where it did become important though in Japan, where they have the outrageously strange system of using both 50 cycle and 60 cycle power in the same country, divided just about in the middle. A strange way to do things with a bid downside, at least that one time. It seems Japan jumped onto the power grip bandwagon a bit late, after other countries had already had their systems well developed. So they decided to try one of each; one system came from the US, based of course on our 60 cycle system and the other from Germany (Seimens IIRC), based on their 50 cycle system. Both worked and both were expanded until they bumped into each other about in the center of Japan. And the country eventually had two entire, functioning electrical systems that were not compatible with each other. There are some phase converters at the junction but not nearly enough to power up the 'other half' of Japan of course but merely covert enough power to help out the 'other' side if and when they needed it.

All of this results in some really strange things such as some consumer electronics working in one half of the country  but not the other. Not sure what they do about TV or if that crosses the two grids or not. But the whole thing did have a disastrous consequence when that Tsunami and the following tidal wave hit them back in '11; after losing a large portion of the northern grid by losing the reactors at Fukushima, the Japanese could not send a large amount of power north from the southern grid due to the limited size of the phase converters, contributing to the reactor accidents that followed.

The Japanese power system is really something that should be and should have been corrected but as these things always go the cost is so high that it is probably prohibitive to do so now. Re- powering 1/2 of a major, industrialized country would be a monumental task that virtually any economy just could not foot.

Brian

Originally everyone travelled on the left as that way your sword arm was facing oncoming travellers.

The switch to travelling on he right actually precedes the invention of the car (by some way, talking early 1700's in France & the USA) and can be linked back to the horse & carriage.

When using multiple horses up front it was easier for the carriage driver to sit on the left as that meant his whip arm could be used through the middle of the horses

So that they could see how much clearance they had to passing carriages they started to drive on the right rather than the left

[mikeyw64]

I'm sure there's a good reason for the voltage difference however it escapes me for the moment

Electrical installations are pretty stringent over here.

You have to either be certified or get a certified electrician in to check any DIY wiring and lately that's also includes things like outdoor security lights


Yes you're right in saying that each individual appliance is fused at the plug however the main fusebox also has to have resettable RCCBs etc and each ring /circuit in the house is also protected by a circuit breaker/fuse.

Looking at he Pic of my main fusebox then from Right to Left I have

A main Siwtch to isolate from the incoming supply.
a 40A circuit for the cooker
a 16A circuit for the water heater (actually mines hooked up to the jauzzi bath as all my water heating is done by a gas combi boiler)
separate 6A circuits for the up and downstairs lighting
a 6A circuit for outside lights
The RCB protecting the Main Rings
separate 32A  circuits for the upstairs & downstairs rings
a 16Amp circuit put in for some extension wiring by the PO that are separate from the downstairs ring main


http://sharetheexperience.co.uk/Images/GTR/fusebox.jpg




E

Another difference that has a lot of tentacles and originated for no reason at all that I can find: You (UK) use 50 cycle power with two legs providing 240 volts (I think it is 240). We (US) use 60 cycle power and also have two legs providing 230 volts but with a twist; we also supply what is called a neutral line, which falls between the two legs (yep, put 'between the two legs' joke here- this one is too easy) and we typically use most of our power by using one of the two legs and neutral to provide 115 volts for general, residential use, but also using 230 volt for items that consume large amounts of power, typically more than 1,500 watts or so: clothes dryers, ranges (electric stoves, I believe you call them 'cookers'?), whole- house water heaters. All of this is for residential and small business use; industrial power use such as anything running machine tools uses three phase power of varying voltage in both countries.

Another big difference is that we current- limit our power as it enters our houses, and all circuits are protected against overload there; after that, we get pretty cavalier about what we plug in where (yep more joke material). As I understand it, and I am certainly no authority on UK wiring, but you pretty freely string circuits around a house and then protect the devices plugged into those circuits by fusing the actual plugs themselves.

But back to the power generation: as I said, your power is 50 cycle, ours is 60 cycle and that results in a whole host of difference by accident. It makes no difference for the original electrical devices, incandescent light bulbs, nor other, simple things such as heating devices. But it makes a huge difference in electric motors and many different types of electronics; our motor base speed is 3,600 RPM due entirely to the cyclic rate of our mains power, yours is 3,000 for the same reason. Our entire analog TV system is built around a 60 Hertz (cycles) rate while yours is based on 50 Hertz, making your TVs, videotape and all related materials not interchangeable with ours (our entire system becomes NTSC, while yours is PAL).

Again, there is absolutely no reason or rhyme to this that I know of, it just worked out that way. And it is not much of a problem given that almost no one packs up, say, a house and moves it to the other country. :-)

Where it did become important though in Japan, where they have the outrageously strange system of using both 50 cycle and 60 cycle power in the same country, divided just about in the middle. A strange way to do things with a bid downside, at least that one time. It seems Japan jumped onto the power grip bandwagon a bit late, after other countries had already had their systems well developed. So they decided to try one of each; one system came from the US, based of course on our 60 cycle system and the other from Germany (Seimens IIRC), based on their 50 cycle system. Both worked and both were expanded until they bumped into each other about in the center of Japan. And the country eventually had two entire, functioning electrical systems that were not compatible with each other. There are some phase converters at the junction but not nearly enough to power up the 'other half' of Japan of course but merely covert enough power to help out the 'other' side if and when they needed it.

All of this results in some really strange things such as some consumer electronics working in one half of the country  but not the other. Not sure what they do about TV or if that crosses the two grids or not. But the whole thing did have a disastrous consequence when that Tsunami and the following tidal wave hit them back in '11; after losing a large portion of the northern grid by losing the reactors at Fukushima, the Japanese could not send a large amount of power north from the southern grid due to the limited size of the phase converters, contributing to the reactor accidents that followed.

The Japanese power system is really something that should be and should have been corrected but as these things always go the cost is so high that it is probably prohibitive to do so now. Re- powering 1/2 of a major, industrialized country would be a monumental task that virtually any economy just could not foot.

Brian

[mikeyw64]

interesting read on why the difference, blame Thomas Edison lol


http://thednetworks.com/2012/06/10/why-does-ukusa-use-110120v-and-others-use-220240v/

[B.D.F.]

I kind of think that article was written by the gentleman who wrote the article about the C-14 in the 'it is now 10 years old' or similar thread :-)  He misses on both the reason we (US) have a true neutral leg, giving us 115 volts (volts AC, VAC) and 230 VAC all in one circuit.

The power grid was invented in the US and it was a mess for a long time. Edison insisted on using DC because he could use Ohm's Law and figure out how it would work with various devices. He could not figure out how to deal with AC as that takes calculus and there were no simple solutions (for all of his fame and worship in the US and perhaps the world, T.A. Edison was not 'the brightest bulb in the chandelier', nor did he interact with others either very well or at all) until a German named Steinmetz came along and introduced the concept of 'operators' which DID replace the simple parts of DC circuit calculation (this is the part about not working with others; Steinmetz gave Edison what he needed to use AC but Edison would not listen).

So when the very first power plant for public supply went in in NYC, it was DC and a strange voltage (I do not remember but it was not the nominal 120 volt). Edison envisioned a power plant every two miles spread in a true grid (where we get the name used today for electrical distribution, 'the grid') all over the US of A. Unimaginable now but then, well, it did not see so bad. But electric motors using DC require brushes to commutate them, and that was a mess too along with a world of hurt regarding short life, spark generation, the occasional fire, poor performance, poor efficiency and greatly varying speed depending on load. Even Edison saw this was a problem. Enter Mr. Nicola Tesla, a genius, a gifted man, a true visionary and a little bit of a whack- job (well, maybe a medium level whack- job) but as a package, an excellent place to start :-)  He works for Edison and suggests that he can make an electric motor with NO commutation! Edison tells Tesla that he will give him $50,000 if he can do so and Tesla proceeds to do exactly that by producing poly-phase AC and the induction motor. Fantastic! Tesla asks for his money, to which Edison tells Tesla that he, Tesla, does not understand the American sense of humor and there really is not any money coming Tesla's way. Did I mention that Edison was kind of a schmuck too? Anyway, that sealed Edison's fate right there because Tesla quit (no matter really) but then went to work for..... George Westinghouse (a disaster for Edison).

But while all of this is going on, the electrification of the northeast US is also happening, with the worst of all possible standards, even worse than DC.... no standard at all. All different voltages, currents and methods of delivery and usage, no rules, no convention just electrical devices failing all over the place and fires waiting for the right time to start. And then Westinghouse's AC induction motors show up and power plants to power them.... but at all different voltages and frequencies. Not too bad when buying one or five light bulbs but a real PITA if trying to run a refrigerator and your block in NYC does not have the right power for the one you bought.

Finally, Westinghouse sets up large scale dynamos at Niagara Falls (and who does not like 'free' power?) and successfully sends that power to Buffalo, NY, about 20 miles away. That was the death knell for DC, Edison's fall would come shortly thereafter (although he remained a wealthy man while Tesla died penniless after finally having converting the rest of his chips into full- blown whack- jobocity). Westinghouse started powering up the US and chose 60 cycles and I do not know why that was. Not sure that anyone does. Britain, Italy and Germany were all there at the fore- front of the electrification of their own countries around the same time. Italy never really got beyond a good start, Britain had several 'movers and shakers' but included Joseph Lucas, The Prince of Darkness who invented the automobile switch with three settings: dim, flicker and off.  (just for you Mike!). And of course, Germany had Bosch and especially, Siemens, who would go on to set the standard for Germany as well, I suspect, for most if not all of Western Europe. Japan was just a little later but late enough to find other parts of the world well underway in electrification. They must have been confused as to which way to go so they bought some generators from both AEG and GE (General Electric; originally the Edison General Electric Co. but remember the part about Edison being a putz, well that is what the board of EGE thought too so they tossed him and his name), put them in the south and north of Japan respectively and then found out when they twisted the wires together where the two systems met, the wire nuts kept turning white and falling off. A real head- scratcher, that one was....

Not sure why it happened, but I believe we maintain 115 VAC (nominal) for consumer devices for safety. We are also pretty cavalier with our plugs and so forth- it is easy to get a shock using American electrical gear (another tidbit: normally, the solid part of an electrical connector is made part of the structure, machine, whatever, and the spring loaded part is part of the cord so when it wears out, you do not have to replace the house or factory but just the cord. Edison thought of that and invented our ubiquitous two- prong (Easy Boys! they added a third one later) electrical plug.... with the rigid parts sticking out of the wall, and the spring loaded contacts in the device! Fortunately that one did not get out into the public, eh?) while you Brits are over the top regarding plug safety (the insulated prongs, the shutters on the wall outlet, although we have them too now and so forth). Then again, you have more voltage waiting to bite you.

As to the frequency of our two systems, I do not know and suspect that perhaps there is not really a reason, it just worked out that way. Someone picked, and that choice spread.

And now for the part everyone has been waiting for......







And finally, the answer to the question: what could possibly go wrong?



Brian

interesting read on why the difference, blame Thomas Edison lol


http://thednetworks.com/2012/06/10/why-does-ukusa-use-110120v-and-others-use-220240v/