OT: science, technology engineering, mathematic and medical thinking skills have arty-crafty components

Does anybody still want a Cadillac?

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin
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When I was young I was fascinated by sailboats, especially large ones, the grand feeling of mass and momentum on the waves. I took lessons, got to spend a few days sailing a friend's 50-foot Hinckley (and repairing it), etc. But now that I could afford one, I've lost interest.

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 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

Perhaps we could agree that there was a number of successive bottlenecks. The stopper that was pulled on the first and biggest was health and longevity. That drastically accelerated progress in other areas, leading to...

More efficient practices is another leading to shorter working weeks. Hard to advance much when almost 100% of the population is working excessive hours in fields growing crops. How you can get 'you misinterpret' from that I don't know.

Clifford Heath.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

They buy a dream, and they get what they paid for. The ticket is just a receipt.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

It used to be said "fools build houses for wise folk to live in".

You could say "fools buy boats for wise folk to crew in".

It's also been said that the 2nd greatest day in a man's life is when he buys a boat. The greatest is when he sells it.

My father used to say that about swimming pools, too.

Clifford Heath.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

We, sadly, eventually give up sailboats and motorcycles and certain classes of people.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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Reply to
John Larkin

Crockett from Miami Vice lived on a boat IIRC he seemed to do okay!

Reply to
bitrex

NT wants to be seen as knowing what he is talking about. He gets hurt and spiteful when people don't take him seriously, which is one more reason why one shouldn't.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

:

d, this is

peer

9% is wrong. In medicine generally, the figure is 90 something percent.

ter place.

h, finanial development, the time to put various improvments in place, deve lopments in car design, all sorts of things. Obviously medical research has brought positive results, but it's been a very miss & sometimes hit path. Now that we can do better, we need to.

ng.

This is a matter of opinion. In the histories I've read, the Second Agricul tural Revolution

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which doubled agricultural productivity in the UK from about 1700 to 1850 w as the crucial first step. People got better fed and healthier, and could m ove off the land into industry without running the risk of starving to deat h if spring was late.

You could also afford to send kids to primary school, rather than using the m to help produce barely enough food.

You put getting healthier before getting better fed, when getting adequatel y fed the whole year around is a necessary precondition for getting healthi er.

Almost all medieval skeletons have annual starvation rings on their teeth - you had to be way up the social ladder to get enough food in late winter t o avoid them. They also tend to be stunted, which wouldn't have helped brai n development either.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

One of the old boats? Pink convertible with top down and driving through sunshine with wife/ squeeze on my arm? I'd do that. :^)

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

I bought an old sunfish for $400, we put some paint on it, and had a 'port' put in when I busted the tiller in a big wind on the cape (cod) (Scargo lake). Little sail boats are fun. The salty tar who put the port in (~$100 with $20 tip.) said I had the old style tiller, which I could replace for the newer one, for $1k. I said thank you again for the port, (which allows me access to inside the hull, so I can attach nuts to the screws.)

George H. Oh the best thing about little boats is sailing on the edge of the wind, and if a gust flips you over.. whee, splash flip it back up.

Reply to
George Herold

That is a slightly rose tinted view of it.

People moved from agricultural labourer into the cities to avoid starving to death in the rural communities. The slums of Mnachester and other major cities were about as grim as it could get. The latter inspired mill owner Engels to write The Condition of the Working Class In England 1844. And later somewhat more benign industrialists wives like Florence Bell in Middlesbrough to write "At the works".

Instead they were mostly tasked with getting in and out of moving cotton machinery to sweep out the dust bunnies. Or being put up chimneys (as happened to one poor lad killed at Isaac Lowthian Bells home). And he was one of the relatively good guys (he also had a coachman to freeze to death waiting for him outside some premises). After those two events in quick succession he moved house and became a much better employer.

Unfortunately today being overfed junk food the year round and never taking any exercise as has become endemic in nearly half the UK & US population is not at all good for life expectancy. The hard won improvements in health of the overall population have stalled.

Certainly true. Modern agriculture has made a big difference.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

:

d, this is

peer

9% is wrong. In medicine generally, the figure is 90 something percent.

ter place.

h, finanial development, the time to put various improvments in place, deve lopments in car design, all sorts of things. Obviously medical research has brought positive results, but it's been a very miss & sometimes hit path. Now that we can do better, we need to.

ng.

If you look at history I don't think that increasing longevity stands out a s the key to technological improvement and thus greater longevity. There ar e many factors along the way, perhaps the biggest early one being the indus trial revolution, specifically the invention of manufacturing machines. Tha t was not afaik caused by longevity, it was just an idea that had to happen and eventually it did.

We have longevity now, but also many other factors that permit greater tech nological progress, and thus not surprisingly rising life expectancy.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

We only have your word for that. If you were to advance an argument about why everyone else is wrong and only you can see "the one true way" then you might stand a chance but keep repeating I am right and every expert is wrong and you managed to sound like a paranoid fantasist.

You seem preoccupied with flying pigs. If you have a scientific argument then make it - otherwise you are Quixote tilting at imaginary windmills.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

I do fine in what I do, talk of 'standing a chance' is nonsense. Obviously I'm well aware that I'm not going to win arguments here based on not saying things, but since I'm more interested in not discussing what I'm involved in online than winning an argument with the idiot slowman, that's how it wi ll stay. He and more reasonable people here are free to go get themselves i nformed or not, it's not my job to do that for them. We both know that's no t a quick process.

Ultimately the position of people that object to what I say boils down to s omething along the lines of 'we were taught as children that it all pretty much works as it should, therefore it does, and anyone who disagrees is wro ng, stupid, mad, etc etc' Sometimes it's worth remembering that that is sim ply what children learn in our society. In practice people tend not to see that for what it is until put in a position where they have no choice but t o face it - and most are never put in that position. Some are and still cli ng to their childhood beliefs.

Nonsequitur, but I understand you will imagine & think that.

At the end of the day you can go study the subject or not. It ain't my job to lead you through it.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

"

y I'm well aware that I'm not going to win arguments here based on not sayi ng things, but since I'm more interested in not discussing what I'm involve d in online than winning an argument with the idiot slowman, that's how it will stay. He and more reasonable people here are free to go get themselves informed or not, it's not my job to do that for them. We both know that's not a quick process.

With NT and John Larkin, the process is not so much not quick as not happen ing at all.

something along the lines of 'we were taught as children that it all prett y much works as it should, therefore it does, and anyone who disagrees is w rong, stupid, mad, etc etc'

Actually my objection to NT is that he rarely says anything particularly sp ecific.

t
.

b to lead you through it.

Actually, NT posts so little specific information that it's difficult to im agine what he thinks that we might study.

The rare occasions when he has been specific - declaring amygdalin to be a useful treatment for cancer, and telling us that anthropogenic global warmi ng stopped in 1998 - it doesn't take much study to show him up as a gullibl e nitwit.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Even if you're not sailing on the edge, sailing small boats on inland lakes with gusty wind can make for lots of fun spills.

--
 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

I learned to sail at summer camp on one of Massachusetts' lakes with a variety of hazards, on a Sunfish or small catamaran crewed by three or four ten year olds, back when ten year olds were allowed to do that sort of thing on their lonesome. If it floated we could find a way to capsize it

Reply to
bitrex

You really are an idiot, shortbit.

You probably were little bastards. You haven't changed.

Idiot. They were there to attend a march for life protest and were gathering to go home after a little sightseeing when *THEY* were accosted. They had a perfect right to be there and did absolutely

*NOTHING* wrong.

Reply to
krw

Recruiting school age kids to attend a march for life rally is morally dubi ous. If they aren't old enough to vote, they aren't old enough to exercise mature judgement about issues like "right to life" and using them to boost numbers at a rally is a form of astroturfing.

The kids might not have done anything wrong, but the adults who recruited t hem aren't exactly blameless.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

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