h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

hi jankaas

I see they are now fighting amongst themselves as to who has 'truth' about the 'Big Bang' and that you stirred the pot (naughty) with the ACG and been given the orthodox response from Carroll.

Perhaps, It is best to draw a veil over the fact that Carroll (subsequent to the Cobe data) seems to turning into something of a Smolinist.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7440217.stm

Sofa, peanuts and beer on this one, imo, and leave the 'cosmologists'** to it.

bsy

hey Bored,

yup, there's a bustle in the hedgerow. and it's all new to me so i am indeed just stirring once in a while (thanks for that link, it still works a treat!!). i must admit to being quite amused at times by SBQ's sense of humour. when he's on he does make me laugh....

other than that i can't say much about physics and cosmology as it's not my field of interest when it comes down to it.

i'll also have a look at the Carroll link you've just provided, but as we're entertaining tonight i can't get stuck in much today.

sorry to have to say that "death to intolerance" won't be able to join the Xmas #1 battle. i'll leave that to the various maulings/versions of Hallelujah and we'll get on in the New Year.

enjoy the tjalk trip, do let me know how you got on.....

Hi jank:


.........and so has theology. Not the only similarity, perhaps

SBQ: Reminds me a bit of the Major - entertaining but not necessarily reliable.

Cosmology: Nor me. But I think the ACG have something of a point about the growing number of 'hypothetical entities' needed to bolster the standard model.

Of course, in the end a theory falls not because of the, often overwhelming, evidence that supports it but due to the anomalies it cannot accommodate.

The history of the Newtonian gravitational theory is a case in point.

Carroll link: Not much in it except:

'"We're trained to say there was no time before the Big Bang, when we should say that we don't know whether there was anything - or if there was, what it was."

(It's Big Bang Theory, Jim, but not as we knew it)

DIIC: The PMG will be devastated though she is somewhat engaged with her first 'commission' -an album cover.

Evolution: I see drf's back on evolution.

I felt quite proud to have got him to admit that the notion of 'macroevolution' as some sort of special event was mistaken and now some ing 'evolutionist' has dragged it back in.

Tjalk: Will do. It seems that a 'boltjalk' is simply a tjalk with a steel hull. A lot of these were apparently built circa 1920.

The one we are going on is apparently a 'tjalkkade'. Something to do with the design of the stern, apparently. My Dutch never extended to include naval architecture.

Somewhat weirdly the cargo of sailing tjalks most commonly mentioned is 'sand, sugar and beets'.

If I don't catch you before then:

Vrolijk Kerstfeest (and subsequently a sufficiency of 'space' oliebollen).

theology: and to complete the Maureen Lipman quote "then you're a scientist". so perhaps the division remains between theology and other ology. actually come to think of it there's astrology....clearly Maureen was talking

SBQ: quite like the Major. for me it's entertainment first!
as far as reliablility goes he's just now being challenged by a Black Belt Quantum Artist......

anomalies: the stuff of progress. the current New Scientist (just about my level with the wind behind me...) discusses the Big Bounce theory. we'll see.

DIIC: am as gutted as your granddaughter, but the bass player (he was in charge of the art work) has a silly busy life juggling family, managing a mental health trust and doing an MA. but the New Year release is definite. no, it really is.


drf333: i have a hunch that this is not a real person, but a computer program. i'm going put this to the test soon(ish) (ish, because i have a very nasty hangover)

'sand, sugar and beets': the diet of real men

prettige kerstdagen en een voorspoedig nieuwjaar!

jank,

Your pekkage has arrived, thanks. I've been busy with some gigs but I'll give it a listen today.

Hi Psi,

pekkage: glad it's with you. see what can happen when postmen are made to jog during their round.......

hi jank

Maureen's : The cosmology debate is becoming quite.....theological. Just substitute 'orthodox dogma' for 'standard model'

SBQ: I am not sure whether SBQ is a WUM though, whereas the Major definitely is. SBQ seems strangely obsessed by vacuums.

Blackbelt Quantum Artist: Not sure whether special expertise ('Trust me I am cosmologist!'***)is being claimed here or not, though.

anomalies: Indeed. Funnily enough I was just watching a Ken Miller video about an 'anomaly' in the MES.

DIIC: Excuses, excuses.... I see however that psi's 'pekkidge' has arrived. Unlikely that I will know that mine has until after Hogmanay.

drf333: A Turing program? It would fit but how do we tell? Though given the amount of repetition on Noah he may not be the only one.

The diet of real men: Sugar? Surely not!

'furrin' signoffs: rg and I are on a warning about this so I'll pass.

Never been in Holland for 'nieuwjaar' but a Dutch friend who has experienced Hogmanay says that they very very similar (especially cakewise).

*** Eerie echoes of 'the mesmerist'

hi jank
Just to let you know that the'pekkige' was amongst my presents. The SO picked it up. Thanks!


My 'experimental' Stollen went down a treat.

Frohe Weinachten und einen guten Rutsch

dear both,

hope you had a good xmas. mine was a bit of a challenge for 2 reasons: i had my inlaws staying, and i had a viral chest infection...... untill then i had been the "last man standing" lookign after sick children and wife. but over the worst of it now, still managed to cook xmas lunch for 8 in any case.

santa brought me some nice bits and bobs, favourites were a Boss DS-1 and DD-3 (sorry Bored, won't mean much to thee. they're effects pedals for my guitars, one to add lots of nasty distortion, the other lots of delay effects). anything good in your stockings sirs?

Bored: new years celebrations in holland are potentially awesome and dangerous in equal measure depending on where you are. if in Amsterdam then it's mostly the latter. my top 3 best evers were there, ducking fireworks, blagging into clubs, partaking of all the good things in life and some others.....do post what you got up to.

better run, cathc up soon.

Hi jankaas

In transit to Edinburgh at moment then onwards for Hogmanay. Weihnachten generally good but details later.

Good trip to Amsterdam/Muiden. Some clarification about skutses, skutjes and tjalks but not a lot.

Hope various infestations viral and relational are gone.

See the Battle of the Big Bang has moved. Steely resolve engaged.

Have a good Hogmanay

bsy

Hi jankaas

Weihnacten sack quite good. New set of leathers, also Helly Hansen sailing dungarees and jacket, a rare Ardbeg cask malt and a couple of interesting books.


Trip to Muiden interesting. Steel hulled sailing tjalk built in Groningen province in 1928 as coastal trader - Ijsselmeer, Waddensee and up coast to Baltic. Converted for cruising as part of the 'bruine vloot. At at 22m much bigger than DB though draught is only 0.6m as compared to1.7m . Single masted gaff rig as compared to single masted Bermuda rig.

It's not quite the same as a 'skutsje'. I was pointed to this:

'All skutsjes are tjalken but not all tjalken are skutsjes. The skutsje is a type of tjalk that was built in Friesland. More attention to detail is apparent than in the Groninger tjalk, but the build is far lighter. The mast is almost always of the self lowering variety with a built in counterweight on the mast foot. The mast is lightly stayed, but the sail area is often huge. An original skutsje is easily identified by the very low cabin roof and the large number of plates making up the bow.'

Apparently one also gets aaks,praams, steilsteven and klippers which variously have different designs of stems, bows and sterns. The Groningen sailing tjalk and the skutsje share the 'krom' (curved) stem and the same type of bow and stern.

One odd thing I came across is that you there is a hybrid design that has both dagger boards and a sternpost mounted rudder.


http://www.sailchartersneek.nl/english/content/aken/lemsteraak_saeftinghe.html


I am going to be fairly busy for the next couple of months so I am disengaging from the 'Religion' boards except for a couple of moribund threads on which I owe psi replies.

Probably would have done so anyway - a touch fed up with the cod science of the 'evolutionists' and 'cosmologists'

so it goes

Happy new year to you both.

Jank, I've just listened to your 2000 album with the elephant and it is definitely my favourite so far, I really like it. So far, I'm particularly fond of track 8, especially the combination of the bass line (5 string?) and what sounds like a Hawaiian guitar riff.

afternoon jank

slight muddle on the nautical bit. The last link is in the wrong place. It shows a typical 'bruine vloot' conversion.

It should also be 'sternpost mounted tiller' not 'sternpost mounted rudder'

http://barges.apolloduck.com/image.phtml?id=100419&image=1

Wheels are apparently more common on sailing tjalks.

Must dash

hi Bored,

sounds like Santa knows just what you like, or do you do what i do and just get these things yourself to avoid forced grinnage?

tjalk: i love the 0.6 m draft bit, the power of physics and all that. did you get to steer and do some work, or did they have lots of muscle on board for the tough stuff? imagine it would have been pretty cold 'n all. i think a distant cousin of mine in Friesland has a small Tjalk but it could be an Aak. must ask my dad next time. thanks also for clearing up that link you provided as i was a bit puzzled (a feeling i live with on a daily basis).


nanoarmour resolve (teflon coated): don't blame you for being fed up. i also spend a bit less time repeating myself, but am still prone to a bit of recidivism. on balance i still get that tiny bit more enjoyment out of it than not, so it will take me longer to quit.


DIIC: i should have the finalised artwork from my bass player this week so then it's off to the printing press! us lot do manage to turn procrastination into an artform. believe me this is even more frustrating for me than you can imagine. most of my other bands would have written/recorded at least 20 tunes per annum worth keeping. compare that with less than 10% with DIIC, but there's just something about the way our ideas and abilities mesh.....it's just worth it somehow.

tot spoedig ziens

hi Psi,

delighted that you're enjoying the "glorious failure" album, the title of which is what happens to the subject line above when you repeat it over and over and over. album title is not some cod way of saying "disc in".


track 8: interesting choice. no 5 string bass (a tool of the devil in poonk rock land btw) on that tune, but it's the 1 song where i play bass (4 strings only). the guitar is just a regular one but played exquisitely through a Digitech Whammypedal (the original version) which gives it that sweeping slide feel. so what you hear is just 1 chord played but controlled with a size 10 Dr Martin on said pedal. the guitarist and 1 wrote the whole thing start to finish from about 10 am till 5 pm, at which point the bass player arrived. he listened a few times and then said "plug in a vocal mic and i'll have a go" (his performance later put through a vocal effect: male - to - female) he then proceeded to recount the tale that form the verse of this song. a true story btw lifted from when we watched a support band for a gig we did north of San Diego.

the female singer of this local band was unfortunately oversize & pug ugly (a kind understatement) who thought she was the most sexy creature on earth. in 1 bit of between song banter she said something like "me and the guys, we were doing the bookstore thing in San Francisco when this huge fat guy pushed his c*** against my **s. so i told him You can **** me in your mind!"....and then they burst into some awfull piece of faux metal. oh how we laughed... the huge Beach Boys type chorus was constructed by the bassist and guitarist another day and i fell in love with it. job done.


the only video we managed to make for this album is on Youtube, just type in the name of track 4.

Hi jank

Lunch break

Sack: Unsolicited (always best) except for the books -Arthur's 'Biased Embryos and Evolution' and Lakatos' 'Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes'

tjalk: I thought I might have got the draught wrong but it appears not. I presume it is the wide beam and lack of keel that does it.

We weren't sailing it just having a look. Plan is to hire for a fortnight and sail the Ijsselmeer and Waddensee in April before tourist season. Definitely going to be a very different sailing experience though.

The SO is also punting a plan to sail DB through Caledonian Canal and across North Sea to Hamburg so we can do some summer sailing in Baltic. A bit delicate as I have a circumbaltic bike run planned.

aak: the whole dutch barge thing gets quite confusing. Apparently there is a book on Dutch barges. I might get it

As far as I can figure it out there are two different types of aken. Hevelaken which have a bow a bit like a skutsje/tjalk but without the curved (krom) stempost and stevenaken which have a straight(?) stempost.


Chobham resolve: It's getting easier. The 'opening hours' of the Religion Boards don't really work for me at the moment. Quite amazed that people have lives that allow them to be almost permanent 'frequent flyers'.


DIIC: Good news. I am still trying to figure out how to download existing oeuvre, I have only manage a quick listen to Compulsion album so far so I don't want to comment yet.

No doubt I'll like it as I do Diskin but it's still DIIC by nose.


Must .

bsy

Ah a whammypedal, that explains it. The effect with that chord is mellifluous in contrast to the other section, and the bass line produces a kind of poly chord effect. The bass sounded low to me, was your bass in standard tuning or is it just the eq that makes it sound a bit sub? I reckoned it was G# E F# but I was hearing a kind of low C# too. Probably just my imagination.

Was the whammypedal used on track 3 as well?

I couldn't find the vid to track 4 though, have I got the right one? (Could be the name of a drink).

hi Bored,


tjalk draft: to me it sounded about right speaking from my limited experience. it's just that when you see it in black and white for such a large vessel it does seem amazingly little. and as you'll experience once you sail in Dutch waters is just how ridiculously shallow it gets in most lakes and waterways. glad you're going in April rather than now since it is bitterly cold.

as for books on Dutch barges i think you may be going all "fous ta cagoule" on me.....


het allerbeste

hi Psi,

mellifluous: had to look it up.......thanks for the compliment!

bass was just standard tuning and spot on with your chord progression. i plugged straight into the desk, very little in the way of eq or compression or much of anything. the low c# is just an emergent-thingy-me-bob that happens when you get lucky


indeed whammypedal on track 3 as well as on #5 off the top of my head.

video: you're searching with the title of track #3 it seems if the drinks clue is anything to go by. we would love to have done a vid for that one, since the song is about a porn star from the 70s. track 3 title is his 1st and surname.......

for the vid on youtube try searching with the next 2 word song title. xword clue: "brass section, not bringing up the rear."

Jank,

ha ha that reminds me of a James Last joke. You've probably heard it. I'll have a look, dunno why I was so dumb that I didn't heed the colour coding...the random vicissitudes of gratuitous genetics I suppose.

I do like it when that emergent phenomenon thing happens.