Posts by EvilDrSmith 578 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jan 2018
Well, it looks like the beastie in the video only has 6 missile tubes on its back, though that's enough to spoil any individual ship's day.
I think a(nother) major factor in the technology being dropped was the problem of salt water corrosion on the airframe and in particular the engines.
The thing is, sticking a nice bright easy to see colour on the tail of an aircraft that in peace time is going to be used for air-to-air refuelling (as well as transport), which involves very expensive aeroplanes manoeuvring very close to each other, is actually quite a sensible thing to do.
River Class = named after Rivers (hence HMS Severn).
The Type 23 Frigates are also named the 'Duke Class', because they are named after Dukes; there have previously been 'County Class' Cruisers (Second World War) and 'County Class' destroyers (1970's/80's), named after British Counties, etc, etc
"Pumped hydro is well understood, it just needs building."
yeah, that's the problem. Where?
You need a decent sized reservoir somewhere at a decent height so that the water has enough potential energy to make it worth it.
Have you got the space on Orkney, or more generally somewhere close to the coast (because while off-shore wind is actually fairly reliable, on-shore is not, so realistically, if as a country we are going to rely on wind to any degree, it will be off-shore wind farms).
Having found suitable sites (relative to the wind farm supplying them when they are pumping water up-hill but also for the recipient of their power when they are generating; also for the geology - need the reservoir not to leak), you then need the cash to build them.
And then chances are you find a local pressure group (almost certainly including lots of self-proclaimed 'environmentalists') that object to their nice local valley being flooded.
So yes, pumped storage is quite viable (and despite my negative comments, I'm a fan and do think we should be making more use of the technique); however, the practicalities and politics of building it are not that straight forward.
"I think you may be assuming that all shortages are equally acute."
No, no assumptions on my part, I just read the articles about truck driver shortages in the US and in the EU.
Did you?
Also, you did spot that word 'just' in my original post?
It's quite important. It signifies that I agreed that Brexit had contributed towards the truck driver shortage, but there were other factors involved as well (and therefore that the claim that it was "only Brexit" was incorrect).
Was that too subtle a use of language for you?
>I'm not sure why the USA keeps quite so many<
Multiple reasons, I think:
(i) commitment to the trinity of delivery systems for strategic use: Air-dropped munitions, land based missiles and sub-based missiles, which in turn is partly a services rivalry thing, potentially, with both USAF and USN having weapons.
(ii) strategic vs tactical weapons (hence battlefield nukes for the US Army and smaller air dropped munitions for the USAF/USN)
(iii) redundancies to ensure a minimum number of weapon systems that actually hit the target - allowing for possible 'first strike' against the US that destroys some of the weapons; lack of reliability or lack of accuracy (yes, even Nuke's need to have a degree of accuracy) which means that some weapons fail or miss; possible counter-measures deployed by the enemy (including a what-if they have something developed in secret type concerns)
(iv) deploying them where they are 'needed' (so warheads on bases and ships worldwide)
(v) (and possibly the main reason) Because 'our nuclear stockpile is bigger than your nuclear stockpile': I think more a 1950's - 1980's mentality than now, but it leaves a legacy - we need to replace these weapons, not just scrap them, because if we used to need them, we obviously still do.
Not a silly question at all (have an upvote).
Push-sampling is a standard technique for (trying to) sample soft soils.
However
(i) the kit on the rover may not actually be set up to do that
(ii) if they are set up to core rock, they are probably looking for 'rock from anywhere' rather than 'something from specifically here'.
So I suspect they'll trundle off and try somewhere else
The problem is that the boring tool you need for one soil or rock type is not the appropriate choice for another soil or rock type.
Plus the ground can just be a sod (no pun intended) sometimes.
Even in London, with a well known stratigraphy, site investigation boreholes sometimes come back with 'no recovery' at certain depths, and that happens with (as I just noted) a good idea of what we're boring, the right kit in good condition with good, skilled, drillers operating it.
I suspect that this thing has basically one type of coring bit, which has to handle any and all rock types its operators want to try and core. From the article, it seems they mistook a very weakly cemented silt (soil) for a more competent rock.
El Reg / Thomas,
Any reason you used the world in data site, and not the WHO?
They have:
Globally, as of 6:39pm CEST, 11 August 2021, there have been 203,944,144 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 4,312,902 deaths, reported to WHO. As of 11 August 2021, a total of 4,394,596,684 vaccine doses have been administered.
which seems pretty consistent with the our world in data figures, to be fair.
Just wondering, really.
"Could we please have a citation for that"
No.
Sorry, but as I did mention, I can't find any of the articles that dealt with it, because I didn't save or bookmark them a year ago.
However, had you asked me a year ago when I first drew attention to this, then the answer would have been yes.
From memory the direct deaths included heart attack and stroke type events, where the deceased followed government advice to stay at home- protect the NHS, and refused to call for an ambulance, which as a result was only called once they actually dropped down dead and their family ended up calling.
The predicted deaths are due for example due to the cancellation of cancer screening, again, from memory.
This one I did save a relevant link for (only for Scotland, mind):
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1262288/Nicola-Sturgeon-news-SNP-latest-coronavirus-Scotland-cancer-screenings-cancelled-COVID19
Ok, that's that the screening was cancelled, not the predicted death toll as a result, but it's also from March 2020, so before the prediction of lock-down induced deaths was made.
There have been more-or-less continuous concerns expressed by mental health professions over the last 18 months about how lock-down is having a negative effect on those suffering with mental illness, and the likelihood of increased suicide numbers.
You may be correct that some deaths occurred due to unavailability of beds due to their being used by Covid patients. However, this would have been a highly newsworthy story. Had it happened, I think we would all know it / remember it (it is the sort of thing that opposition politicians would - rightly - be banging on about for ever more).
From memory, one hospital in North London did call an emergency 'we're full' type alert, which saw incoming patients diverted to neighbouring hospitals for a few days. That got quite a lot of publicity at the time, despite no patient actually suffering.
So in summary - no I cannot provide the citation, because it was >1 year ago and I didn't bookmark it, but yes their are clear and credible mechanisms that show how lock down can cause deaths.
"how many thousands will die of potentially avoidable diseases because the NHS was completely focussed on covid for 2 years?"
In July 2020, the Government's own estimate was that lock down had killed 25,000 (actually dead before July) and would kill another 185,000 (missed cancers etc) in years to come. Those were not dead 'of covid' or 'with covid' but specifically 'without covid' / due to lock down effects.
I can't track down the news story now, so not sure if that was UK or just England. That was also with reference to Lock-down 1. (Looking back at past posting, I discussed this in a post I made in August 2020, where I said UK).
Lock-downs 2 and 3 presumably have pushed up that number, though there may be more recent assessments that may have revised it down (though logically, the 25,000 actually dead should be a fairly reliable number).
Have an up-vote, though 'second-best' and 'numbers' are both debatable points.
The Panther had good front armour (subject to quality control problems leading to brittleness as the war went on) but quite weak side armour. It had reliability issues that were never sorted out. If I recall (i) the Panther had a slow turret traverse (particularly in relation to UK and US designs), which makes that weaker side armour more of a thing to worry about.
'Best' is always subjective, but in practice, the tank that you have in the battle is better than the supposedly better one that broke down on the way to the front (or because it ran out of fuel, or ...)
Both the T34 and the Sherman saw extensive post-war use (with the Sherman being much modified/upgraded), and both were produced in much greater numbers than the Panther.
The British Comet gets routinely over-looked (largely because the Centurion arrived only a few months after), but was mobile, well armed, adequately armoured and reliable; if I recall (ii), one British Armoured unit (published reminiscence I read years ago) tended to be very wary of getting into trouble until they received Comets, then went actively looking for trouble. Fewer Comets than Panthers though.
The Soviet T44 is almost unheard of, it seems (largely because the T54 arrived a couple of years later), and was basically a better T34. Again, fewer T44 than Panther.
But Panther most definitely not obsolete in 1945, agreed.
Reparations were country to country, not king-to-king (if, in part, because France had no king), so 'the same family' isn't really relevant, or (in the case of France, applying your logic) accurate.
You also ignore the historical precedent of the German demand for reparations from France after the Franco-Prussian war (which were paid without crashing the French economy).
Also, Hitler's rise to power was in the 1930's, the financial impact of reparations on Germany was more in the 1920's. The Wall Street Crash was likely more significant on the rise of Hitler
No tracks - no moving under it's own power.
The transmission turns the drive sprockets (the big, slightly spike wheels at the front, which are some way above ground level).
The drive sprockets engage the track, which moves the tank.
The road wheels (the wheels along the side that are actually in contact with the ground, but should be sitting on the tracks) are unpowered, and just transfer the tank's weight to the tracks to the ground.
No tracks: its a 45 ton unpowered cart, and it needs something of similar weight to tow it
Yep.
Routine Construction Industry ground risk in the UK, Germany and much of Europe.
In the UK there are Construction Industry publications giving guidance on assessing and addressing the risk, and numerous specialist companies that deal with it (to varying degrees of competence).
UXB found and dealt with in Goole in the UK just last week on a housing development.
The Earth's climate is naturally dynamic, and with quite extreme natural variations. The assumption that any climate change that is occurring or is assumed to be occurring now is solely due to Human activity is somewhat hubristic. Ultimately, Humans are unimportant little blobs of mostly carbon crawling around the planet's surface (no offence to those who have a belief in a chosen deity that they think says otherwise).
That said, Humans have been affecting the environment and hence the climate for probably our entire existence. I believe the current explanation for the formation of the Sahara desert is natural (wobble of the Earth or some such about 6000 years ago), but that local grazing practices have contributed towards it's expansion (and that was long before industrialisation and the widespread use of fossil fuels).
Humans created the dust bowl in the US in the 1930's, and the Soviet's were responsible for the drying up of the Aral Sea.
It is recognised that building large dams affects the environment/micro-climate of the area they are built in.
In inventing agriculture, we, as a species, have completely changed much of the planet's landscape, with corresponding changes to moisture (evaporation) and drainage patterns, etc. In domesticating various plant and animal species we have also, through selective breeding, been undertaking genetic engineering for several thousand years, creating whole new breeds, and eliminating natural traits from various species.
The entire UK landscape of Green and Pleasant Land that we now tend to look on as something to be protected because it's 'nature' is in practice a human created environment, resulting from large scale deforestation.
There are a number of good reasons to reduce our use of 'fossil fuels', and one of them may be that their use causes climate change and that climate change is a bad thing and has to be stopped. But I note that quite recently, the BBC deleted from their website on climate change a section on 'benefits of climate change', under pressure from a self-selected band of 'climate defenders' (who, I suspect, are often motivated more by baser politics than true concern for the environment).
It should be of great concern to anyone that believes in evidence-based decision making, who considers facts and reason to be the foundation of discussion and identification of technical solutions, that contrary opinions have to be silenced, contrary evidence has to be suppressed.
Humans have, throughout our existence, modified environment (and climate), sometimes accidentally/ignorantly/stupidly, often times deliberately, intelligently, and for our benefit.
The current 'climate emergency' has been too heavily politicised and monetarised. Sadly, it makes any debate as to what is actually the best course of action impossible, too many people have views that are too entrenched / self serving.
I dunno, they didn't say that the miners were still in them at the time...
Less flippantly, if the miners were stealing enough electricity to cause power cuts, the houses may have had some 'interesting' wiring or other features that made them fundamentally unsafe (as far as residential properties go), and it was thus easier/cheaper/safer to demolish them rather than try to make them safe.
A fair point to make (have an upvote).
The 'Britain alone' concept does appear to date back to 1940 though (there's a fairly well known cartoon by Lowe, who was in fact a New Zealander).
So I think there was possibly an acceptance (initially) that 'Britain Alone' meant not just Britain but also Dominions and Empire.
70 years of changing attitudes to Empire have I suspect changed how we as a society talk about it and what it achieved, and resulted in some simplifications. Hence, 'Britain alone' does nowadays tend to be viewed to mean just Britain.
This point does actually tie in nicely with the article that's triggered it. The resources available to Britain (ie. all the Empire+Dominions, plus all the neutrals that Britain can trade with but the Germans can't because of the British blockade on Germany) meant that Germany had no chance of winning a long war, unless they can somehow cut that trade network (which in fact they never came close to, not withstanding that it was a long and hard fight).
It's a good / interesting book, that does challenge the 'standard' narrative that 'everyone knows'. But then, in my (limited) experience, when it comes to history, the stuff that 'everyone knows' is often less than accurate.
O'Brien's argument (Spoilers!) really comes down to 'production mattered', and when the Axis are losing more war material through mismanagement of production/bombing/losses during delivery than they are at the front in actual battle, the battles themselves are not the critical feature of the war.
Surface displacement of a U-boat varies (a lot) according to mark, but is typically perhaps around the 1000ton mark.
German production of the Tiger 1 (weight ~50t) was a tad under 1350. (not a typo, One thousand three hundred and forty-something).
So 50 tanks/U-boat would be optimistic, but purely on a mass of material basis, 20 (Tiger 1) to 40 (Panzer 3) - so the the basic idea holds true.
Most coffee-table-TV programmes on Blitzkrieg tend to give the impression that the German army was composed entirely of panzers and infantry riding around in armoured half tracks ('Hanomags' to those of us of a certain age and with memories of Airfix).
In reality, the German army marched everywhere. 90% of it's numerical strength was foot-infantry, moving long distance by train, then getting out and walking, with heavy weapons and supply wagons drawn by horses.
Despite this, the German army in 1941 and 1942 had the mobility to out manoeuvre the Soviet Army, killing 100,000s and capturing millions (literally) of POWs.
In 1944 and 1945. the Soviet army is doing the same back to the Germans, and this is when the bulk of the German Army losses occur.
The simple view is to look at the casualties suffered by the German army, note that the majority was on the Eastern Front, and jump to a conclusion.
If you look at when in the war the casualties occurred, and try to understand why, for example, the German Blitzkrieg worked in 1941 and 1942 but couldn't be repeated in 1944/45, whereas the Soviet deep operational plans (which were basically blitzkrieg in Russian) failed in 1941/42, but worked so well in 1944/45, it becomes clear that it actually isn't that clear.
German fuel supplies were crippled because of actions from the west; German airpower was destroyed in the west (look up 'operation point blank'). German transport infrastructure was destroyed from the west. This all acted to destroy the German army's mobility in 1944/45.
Did Germany lose the war because the German army was defeated in the East, or was the German army defeated in the East because Germany had lost the war?
I think a fair bit of ocean plastic is discarded/lost fishing gear (floats etc).
Added to that there is stuff off ships (partly rubbish chucked overboard, partly lost deck cargo/ containers that have been washed over-board)
Added to that, plastic tends to degrade very slowly, and while we might not have been dumping stuff in the ocean for decades, stuff that old can still be around
Yup - we've discovered that skype (text only) works well. You can set up one-to-one chats, for those situations where the party inconsiderately split's up into ones, drop in images, etc. Pre-prepared text can be cut-and-pasted.
Not the same as face-to-face, but easier for those with family commitments, and means that what would have been travel time to get to the venue is now game time, so we get 3 to 4 hours a week, rather than 2-3 hours every fortnight.
I'm reasonably sure that third rail sections in the old Southern Region area have line speeds in excess of 100mph, though the point about 'oomph' (should that be '00 mph'?) may still be correct.
However, while third rail may be easier to trespass onto, if someone is on the third rail, it's casualty rescue, if they get zapped by the O/H wires, it's body recovery.
Third rail is also mechanically/structurally simpler and less intrusive: just a big hunk of rail on an insulated pot every 4th sleeper or so, plus some chunky connecting cables (when they're not stolen during power isolations).
O/H requires gantries (posts and arms, sticking up higher than the train, thus also foundations to keep the standing upright), the cables themselves, the tensioning mechanism, etc
The message on the side of the bus was a trap.
The message on the side of the bus was carefully worded to encourage the remain campaign to talk about it /complain about it, and in doing so make the leave campaign's point that the UK was a net contributor to the EU (i.e. that the UK sent the EU lots of money).
Had the bus said £280 million (Gross contribution less rebate = what the UK actually sent to the EU), the bus would have faded from peoples' minds in a few days.
Instead, the remain campaign (helpfully, from the leave campaign's point of view) reminded everyone day in and day out that the UK sent the EU lots of money.
I wonder how many people that complain about the bus actually saw one, in real life (and also, which version: there were in fact at least two variants of the message). And yet, thanks to the remain campaign / remain supporters, we all know about the bus and can visualise it and are quite sure we saw loads of them.
Apparently, the Russian Air Force has just provided a similar test for the RN's Type 45 destroyer.
From 'Forces Net' (14;20 23/06), Russian Foreign ministry claim that they fired warning shots and dropped 4 bombs ahead of a RN destroyer to warn it off entering Russian waters.
RN deny it happened, and state that they were in Ukrainian territorial waters.
Hopefully, the next test isn't of Defender's anti-aircraft missiles.
The appear to be police boats for routine patrolling, and warding off lost/thoughtless civilian sailors, plus civil protests, which are generally unarmed.
They would also likely be the first defence against terrorists. In that situation they have whatever guns the crew and passengers carry, which is likely going to be on par with whatever weapons they are facing in the hands of the terrorists (and which is presumably the thought in providing bullet resistant materials on the boat).
Given that they will be routinely deployed in harbours, which tend to have lots of people all over the place, firing off heavy calibre machine guns or light automatic cannon might be somewhat counter-productive (every bullet or shell has to land somewhere, and they won't all hit the target).
Good Article!
Not the last dam failure in the UK, though - though might be the last with fatalities.
Defra / the Environment Agency have published a lessons from Historical dam incidents document:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/290812/scho0811buba-e-e.pdf
Which is quite an interesting read, if you like this sort of thing.
Without digging out any references...
I think that BA proved that although Concorde was noisier than contemporary airliners 'at source', it had a steeper climb out, so that the actual noise level experienced by people living and working around the airport was no worse (and actually better in some cases).
However, the US authorities kindly took their time in considering this argument, by which time a lot of potential orders for Concorde had been cancelled.
Also (again, from memory, not checking the references), one of the particularly clever bits on Concorde were the engine air intakes, that gave it a significant boost in thrust.
Some very clever engineering in Concorde.
Also, my understanding is that BA operated Concorde at a profit right until its end-of-service (note: operated, so not covering the development costs, just measured against operational costs)
Good question and I don't know the answer.
Which is more likely to lead to a vaccine-resistant strain developing:
1. Concentrate vaccination in discrete areas, so as to suppress near-totally transmission in those areas (and thus presumably, minimising the risk of virus mutation in those areas), while the virus is largely free to spread (and mutate) elsewhere.
2: distribute vaccines more widely, but more thinly, so that virus transmission is reduced everywhere, but at a generally lower rate, and the virus potentially encounters more people that have been vaccinated but not developed immunity over a longer time period, so may have greater potential to mutate?
As I say, I've no idea which is correct. I've a suspicion that even the scientists couldn't say for sure.
Thought I heard 47% reduction on the radio this morning, but that was probably one specific study with specific conditions.
Agreed, there is a reported reduction in the risk of infecting others.
But it's not a total elimination of the risk.
So we are still in 'statistically, you are less likely to..." territory, rather than "vaccination makes you safe, 100%".
The problem is they do not prove you are safe.
They prove you have been vaccinated.
That makes you a lower risk than someone unvaccinated, but not 100% safe.
But your comment proves one of the pitfalls - people will think that if you have the 'passport' you are safe, and likely will act with less caution.
If I recall correctly, a bit before Easter, when vaccination rates were rising and we started getting some good (well, not-so-bad) weather, the authorities took to reminding us all that we still had to obey all the lock-down restrictions because vaccination does not provide 100% immunity.
That vaccinations are not 100% immunity is of course, 'the science', not just for COVID, but any vaccination.
So proof of vaccination is not proof that you do not have/cannot catch/cannot transmit COVID.
It might reasonably be argued that it's proof that you are less likely to have/catch/transmit COVID than someone that has not been vaccinated.
At which point, we have moved into statistics and percentages of population that are immune / herd immunity.
The authorities know how many people have been vaccinated. They know what percentage of vaccinated people are therefore immune to COVID (though of course, cannot readily distinguish the majority vaccinated and immune from the minority vaccinated but not immune). They can make whatever allowance the science says they should make for those people that are immune through having had COVID, or any other factor. They should therefore be able to establish what percentage of the population is immune, and therefore whether we have reached herd immunity levels.
If we have reached herd immunity, vaccine passports (which, remember, prove vaccine status not immunity status) are not needed for activities within the UK: we should be back to pre-COVID normality.
If we have not reached herd immunity, maybe we should just hang on in for a few more weeks until we have.
Vaccination passports for international travel are clearly a separate consideration.
"It is expected that, if the app-based concept goes ahead, it will have no place in steps two and three of the UK's reopening "roadmap", which includes schools, non-essential retail, gyms, and nail salons"
Whose expectation is that?
My expectation is that if the app goes ahead, it will be used in as many locations as the authorities think they can get away with using it, for as long as they think they can get away with it.
I doubt Google got much from me, I sent back the hard copy form by post.
And no, I didn't use the code to go online and request the form.
I got the letter - only, it was addressed to a house two doors down (so I did the Postman's job and delivered it to the correct address).
Never received the original letter to my address (presumably it went somewhere).
Got visited by Census ONS lady, got given form. Completed and returned by post.
At which point, I would gloat about the superior security of old-style hard copies only in protecting personal data.
Apart from the fact that I've now had three further visits from the ONS people saying they have no record of me completing the census, the last one being ~2 weeks after I returned the form.
Still, if Royal Mail can lose both the inbound letter and my return, that's a form of security, right?
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