Castle Aching

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

5 hours ago, Mrkirtley800 said:

I lived through that and we are much better off now, no one is actually dropping bombs on us.

 

 

Yet ........ 

[Annie]

3 hours ago, robmcg said:

edit; I should add, given the posts which preceded this, that NZ is in total lockdown still, after three weeks, with few new cases, and very few deaths, the dozen or so being old people with pre-existing conditions, we were fortunate in our geographical isolation, have managed the 1,200 infections as most are clusters. I reiterate my sadness and sympathy for those in badly affected countries.

I have four long time on-line friends (real friends, not fake Facebook friends) who live in the kingdom of the mad emperor and they tell me things are pretty darn grim over there with the federal government not much concerned who dies as long as it's not them.

The word from our NZ government is that our borders are going to remain closed for anything up to two years with no-one but NZ citizens being allowed in and then they have to be in compulsory supervised quarantine for 14 days.  We're lucky in that we're three islands  in the ocean a long way from any other countries and our population is relatively small so our approach works.  We're not immune from stupid though with a small percentage of our population being infected and there's no cure for that either.

[monkeysarefun]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

I have four long time on-line friends (real friends, not fake Facebook friends) who live in the kingdom of the mad emperor and they tell me things are pretty darn grim over there with the federal government not much concerned who dies as long as it's not them.

The word from our NZ government is that our borders are going to remain closed for anything up to two years with no-one but NZ citizens being allowed in and then they have to be in compulsory supervised quarantine for 14 days.  We're lucky in that we're three islands  in the ocean a long way from any other countries and our population is relatively small so our approach works.  We're not immune from stupid though with a small percentage of our population being infected and there's no cure for that either.

 

We've been pretty lucky too, under 70 deaths and many of them from that one cruise ship idiocy, and daily new infections down to double figures.

All pretty good news compared to practically  everywhere else but the most important thing seems to be when will the Rugby League season  start up again? - without the Auckland Warriors for obvious reasons (unless they are trapped here at the moment?)

 

Our lockdown hasn't been as strenuous as NZ - I can still get my  hair cut,  get my car serviced,  send my kids off to school, get my dog shampooed - but I can't go into the surf for some reason.

Edited April 16, 2020 by monkeysarefun

[Edwardian]

Mornin'

 

I should think you Anzacs need to keep yourselves separate and safe .... as one day soon you might be all that's left of us.

 

As a new day is upon us here in Blighty, good luck everyone.

[Hroth]

6 hours ago, robmcg said:

I raised the dome tiny bit

 

Dome?  DOME???   Mr Churchward is very upset... 

...

 

I've never smoked, but if I knew that a packet of ciggies would contain a card like that, I'd buy it and having extracted the card, donate the rest to a politician of my distaste...

 

4 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

It would make sewage disposal a bit tricky I suspect ............

 

Tricky yes, but recycling would be essential to preserve biomass as the only way to dispose of it would be forced discharge through the shell of the sphere into space*.  Just like pumping the stuff directly into rivers and seas, but no-one would have ever done that... 

 

Oh well.  Mornin' ALL!!!

 

 

 

* Knowing our luck, it wouldn't drift off, polluting regions unknown (unless thats what Dark Matter actually is...), but would fall back and settle on the surface of our sphere, attracting the attentions of Interstellar Scarab Beetles**, who would roll us off somewhere!

 

**  If there's room for A'tuin (Chelys galactica) then there's room for beetles.

 

Edited April 16, 2020 by Hroth
Correcting a mistyping, then ill-advised footnoting...

[Donw]

4 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

It would make sewage disposal a bit tricky I suspect ............

 

Well gravity would have to keep us up rather than down (centrafugal force?)  so it would probably work ok. Not that I think the idea at all sensible.

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

Gravity is a function of mass, so if the mass was a hugely massive thing enclosing us inside a spherical void, we would still be attracted to it.

 

I do wonder, though, whether the attraction might apply in all directions, so net to near-zero, leaving centripetal force as the main thing sticking us to the wall of the void ....... we might be able to cross the void with relatively little effort, maybe using mechanical wings driven by bicycle pedals.

 

Imagine flitting across to another continent.

 

No sun, of course ...... so goodness knows where energy would derive from!

[Hroth]

1 minute ago, Nearholmer said:

No sun, of course ...... so goodness knows where energy would derive from!

 

Huge compost heaps of decomposing matter?

I suppose we would have evolved without a sense of smell!

[Donw]

The sun would need to be very strange one half really bright the other dark  or something like that.

 

This is really silly back to model railways I think.

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

Gravity would net to zero in the centre of the void, I think, and be a weak net force closer to the wall.

 

Centripetal force would also be zero at dead-centre, I think.

[Donw]

2 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Gravity would net to zero in the centre of the void, I think, and be a weak net force closer to the wall.

 

Centripetal force would also be zero at dead-centre, I think.

 

Would that be Trump's wall, a weak net sounds about the mark.

 

Don

[Hroth]

13 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I do wonder, though, whether the attraction might apply in all directions, so net to near-zero, leaving centripetal force as the main thing sticking us to the wall of the void ....... we might be able to cross the void with relatively little effort, maybe using mechanical wings driven by bicycle pedals.

 

5 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Gravity would net to zero in the centre of the void, I think, and be a weak net force closer to the wall.

 

Centripetal force would also be zero at dead-centre, I think.

 

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke and many of the "Culture" novels by Iain M Banks involve artificial worlds with these features....

 

9 minutes ago, Donw said:

The sun would need to be very strange one half really bright the other dark  or something like that.

 

This is really silly back to model railways I think.

 

Must we? 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

On 14/04/2020 at 17:15, Annie said:

Ooooooooooooo there's lots of topics the parish council might discuss that have been barely touched on yet.

 

Quack remedies.

 

 

 

 

 

As there have been complaints of silliness I'm resolved to point out that the pre-Raphaelites were very serious as well and kept up with the latest in scientific discoveries.

 

This example shows their depiction of the Lady of Shalott after indulging in the electromagnetic bathing fluid that Annie kindly drew our attention to. 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Edited April 16, 2020 by Malcolm 0-6-0

[Nearholmer]

I’ve come to wonder whether the Lady of Shalott is an allegory about a lonely woman attempting to wind-in a soulmate through on-line dating, her only contact with the outside world is through the screen of an iPad.

 

”The Facebook cracked from side to side ......”

 

 

Edited April 16, 2020 by Nearholmer

[webbcompound]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Gravity would net to zero in the centre of the void, I think, and be a weak net force closer to the wall.

 

Centripetal force would also be zero at dead-centre, I think.

Which actually links to an SF railway of sorts in the remake of the based on an original story by (please keep up) the Philip K.Dick story "We can remember it for you wholesale"  (Total Recall, not the Shwarzeneger version). The 2012 remake features what can only be described as a railway which goes right through the center of the earth, and so the journey inviolves a central zero-gravity section, followed by a complete reversal of the direction of gravity for the second half of the journey.

Edited April 16, 2020 by webbcompound

[Edwardian]

55 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I’ve come to wonder whether the Lady of Shalott is an allegory about a lonely woman attempting to wind-in a soulmate through on-line dating, her only contact with the outside world is through the screen of an iPad.

 

”The Facebook cracked from side to side ......”

 

 

 

... with Sir Lancelot out on the pull.

 

I think you are onto something there.  It is a great metaphor for youth obsessed with social media.  The world is only seen through the distorting mirror of one's online "friends", with the online bubble they inhabit, and fake news and trivia, taking the place of reality.  The weaving is, then, all the time spent posting selfies in return for the endorphin boost of "likes".

 

Lancelot, on the other hand, had been locked in his bedroom playing Call of Duty 24/7 until King Arthur kicked him out with the withering advice "go outside, the graphics are great".

 

Then a policeman fined him for making an unnecessary journey.

[Regularity]

13 hours ago, Mrkirtley800 said:

My wife heard someone complaining that with the close down due to the virus, we are worse off and more restricted than in WW2.  Well, it is just not true, I lived through that and we are much better off now, no one is actually dropping bombs on us.

Derek

Whilst that is indeed true, Derek, the bombs dropping did provide a very obvious and tangible reason for the restrictions which made it easier to tolerate.

A virus is, by it's very nature, invisible and insidious and even those not affected by it might transmit it, which is what the idiots who flaunt the restrictions don't seem to understand.

[Hroth]

15 minutes ago, Regularity said:

which is what the idiots who flaunt the restrictions don't seem to understand.

 

The most egregrious being the idiots who drove from London to Torquay to do some fishing, and the ineffable fools who drove from London to the Lake District for a "holiday", believing that facemasks and gloves made it "ok".  In both cases they were fined for this and turned around., the Devon gang were even "escorted to the border".  These two were in the last week or so.

 

• Is there a linking factor in these two cases?
• Do behaviours similar as the above, that have not been detected are entirely responsible for the infection rates continuing to climb, despite "lockdown"?

 

Talking about fines for irresponsible journeys, in the cases above was it just the driver who attracted a fine or were all "responsible" adults in the vehicles fined too?  The reports never say...

 

I know, I know, its completely off topic....

 

 

Edited April 16, 2020 by Hroth
Apology, for all sorts of things...

[Nearholmer]

4 minutes ago, Hroth said:

the infection rates continuing to climb

 

But, the infection rates are climbing at an increasingly-decreasing rate, and have been since as early as five days after 'lock-down', in a way that is entirely consistent with a highly effective SD/lock-down process.

 

The headlines on Tuesday were all about "thousands flout lock-down", and its right that flouters should get whopped, but the bigger headline is actually something like "66 Million following the rules".

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

 

... with Sir Lancelot out on the pull.

 

I think you are onto something there.  It is a great metaphor for youth obsessed with social media.  The world is only seen through the distorting mirror of one's online "friends", with the online bubble they inhabit, and fake news and trivia, taking the place of reality.  The weaving is, then, all the time spent posting selfies in return for the endorphin boost of "likes".

 

Lancelot, on the other hand, had been locked in his bedroom playing Call of Duty 24/7 until King Arthur kicked him out with the withering advice "go outside, the graphics are great".

 

Then a policeman fined him for making an unnecessary journey.

 

I "liked" this - enjoy your endorphin boost!

 

12 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The headlines on Tuesday were all about "thousands flout lock-down", and its right that flouters should get whopped, but the bigger headline is actually something like "66 Million following the rules".

 

Which just goes to prove that journalists and railway modellers have much in common: they will persist in preferring the unusual to the usual - that one-off pulley wagon, say, to the 66 thousand standard 5-plank opens...

[Edwardian]

2 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Whilst that is indeed true, Derek, the bombs dropping did provide a very obvious and tangible reason for the restrictions which made it easier to tolerate.

A virus is, by it's very nature, invisible and insidious and even those not affected by it might transmit it, which is what the idiots who flaunt the restrictions don't seem to understand.

 

I tentatively suggest that, in terms of mortality at least, only if we see something like 1% of the total present UK population (66.65m) die virus-related deaths over, say, a 5-year period (666,500 deaths), would the death toll render Covid worse for the UK than WW2. Bear in mind, though, if we suffer over 900,00 Covid-related deaths within a year of the outbreak in the UK, we will have exceeded the average annual UK death toll for WWII.

 

However, with the lack of testing, and, in particular, the lack of post-mortem testing outside hospital "settings", we are probably under-recording.  IIRC, the record weekly death rate of 16,000 was 6,000 higher than the previous highest.  Of the 6,000 extra deaths, only 3,500 were recorded as Covid.  I'd bet money that the vast majority of the other 2,500 extra deaths were also Covid-related, so there is the potential for very significant under-recording of UK Covid-related deaths.  

Spanish 'flu is thought to have killed 50 million people worldwide in 1918-1919. That makes that disease more fatal than the 40 million death toll of WWI, but less so than WWII, though of course, Spanish 'flu deaths are all concentrated in a year or so. 

 

According to Wiki, an estimated total of 70–85 million people perished in World War II, which was about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. 2.3 billion). For the UK (and the figures include the Crown Colonies), the total military and civilian deaths are given as 450,900, which equated to 0.94% of the 47,760,000 population. 

 

Still, at least the pubs stayed open.

 

And generally we weren't under house arrest. For sure, though, the restrictions are necessary.  I for one would have felt unsafe had the lock-down period not been extended, and I wish nothing more than to observe it strictly in the hope that everyone else does the same.  "Stay Home and Die Alone because your government was under-prepared" is not a great message, but it still essential that we comply. 

 

Still, not so much run rabbit these days, more ...

 

If you go down in the woods today
You're sure of a police spot fine.
 

 

[Nearholmer]

Edwardian

 

Even the most dire scenario, effectively "do nothing" and let the virus run through the population, was not expected to give rise to the number of fatalities within the UK that you cite, it was modelled at c500 000 (the outputs and confidence limits are in the public domain via ICL), and over a period of months, not years. Basically, 60%+ of the population would catch it, and because the health service would be totally overwhelmed by severe cases, the fatality rate would be high.

 

Assuming that one acquires immunity, and that the beast doesn't rapidly mutate, even in a "let rip" scenario the thing self-limits ....... its an S-shaped curve of growth of cases, the 'S' rising very steeply, but also having a long, very slowly rising, top-edge-tail (it would be easier to draw than describe!), as the "last few", some naturally isolated hill-farmers and island-hermits, catch it over a long period. A small % would never catch it, because it would simply cease to propogate, the famous "herd immunity" would operate.

 

The current strategy is modelled to give rise to c20 000 fatalities in the "current wave", the big, huge, ginormous question being how to prevent the beast breaking loose, and fatalities shooting-up, after the "current wave".

 

As to whether "your government was under-prepared"  I don't imagine any health service could ever be sustained with "capacity in waiting" to treat maybe 15% of the population for severe respiratory illness over a period of, say, three months, which, is what the "let rip" scenario would have required ...... it would be the equivalent of maintaining a standing army, navy and air force, fully equipped, trained and drilled, ready to fight the whole of WW2 at a moments notice.

 

In my view, the questions to be asked are more around whether the government acted swiftly enough, and decisively enough to limit import and spread in the very early stages (and the fact that I think those are the questions probably tells you what I think the answers are!).

 

Kevin

 

PS: Just say so if you want me to get off my obsession-horse.

 

 

Edited April 16, 2020 by Nearholmer

[ChrisN]

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Which just goes to prove that journalists and railway modellers have much in common: they will persist in preferring the unusual to the usual - that one-off pulley wagon, say, to the 66 thousand standard 5-plank opens...

 

You will obviously be pleased with the latest post from Knuckles SCC.

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, ChrisN said:

 

You will obviously be pleased with the latest post from Knuckles SCC.

 

@Knuckles - D299 and Drg 1143 D305 - very nice but both have numberplate (correctly) to the right on one side but (incorrectly) to the left on the other! D299 has a late-style rectangular door banger on both sides.

[webbcompound]

Not so much having a standing army on standby Nearhomer, more having a spare warehouse full of PPE gear, as recommended a couple of years back. Instead of which we are playing the silly arse knit for Britain game making PPE substitutes out of old T-shirtsd (according to our local paper anyway)

 

A bit like not having enough carriages or drivers available for a predictable timetable change. Nobody would be that stupid, surely?

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