Zombie

Er ... well this is a contractual dispute, possible fraud ... or both

Gotit! The solution to procrastination

Here's a useful wiki page covering all the above ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_matter No reason to be a closet geek - be out and proud!

Dunno what it is but it sounds good so well done

I was only referring to "everyday matter" But you're right, all the interesting stuff seems to be in the transitional phases

Hi, I'm Zombie and I like fishes Ooops forgot - welcome to GA

As I understand it - and I'm not a scientist - everyday matter can exist in three states: solid, liquid, gas [also plasma in special conditions]. The transition between these is an important area of science and the terms fluidity and viscosity - which have opposite meaning - describe the resistance to flow at the molecular level due to internal friction, which varies between materials and according to temperature. So water is a liquid form of solid ice and water vapour gas, glass is a solid which flows at high temperatures but not at room temperature, and pitch does flow at room temperature but very very slowly In the real world - in other words outside of a lab - everything has some viscosity, which is measured in units called "poises". The links I gave probably answer your questions but if you really really want more geeky stuff plus some nice complicated equations then here's another specially for you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscosity

Hey, don't be a meanie I just like the idea of a slow motion drop being matched with a slow motion splat - maybe those other drops will deform in time to become splats, and maybe that'll be Part 2 of the experiment Interesting it's commonly believed that glass also flows - over centuries - as a "supercooled liquid", but it seems this is yet another urban myth http://www.glassnotes.com/WindowPanes.html http://www.cmog.org/article/does-glass-flow

Tension is mounting in the world of science as the next drop in the 86 year old Pitch Drop Experiment prepares to ... drop. This will be the first drop to drop since ... er ... well since the last one dropped in November 2000 Scientists are reaching orgasmic states of excitement as they eagerly anticipate the moment when the sticky tendril holding the ninth drop suddenly SNAPS! and the oily drop SPLATS! Here's a pic of one of those scientists "on the edge" as he gapes in wonder and struggles to contain his excitement And here's a live video link so you too can watch this momentous happening - as it happens! http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment

S.S. United States I'd forgotten about this ship. I assumed she'd gone to the great scrapyard in the sky like all the other historic liners. But no, she still exists. When she was launched in 1952 she was impressive, powerful, streamlined, and beautiful with her sleek profile and distinctive funnels, and modern interior. The designer was obsessed with fire safety so no wood was used. He even insisted Steinway supply aluminium cased pianos as on the Hindenberg - until they demonstrated there was no fire risk by dousing a piano in petrol and trying unsuccessfully to set it alight On her maiden voyage she smashed the transatlantic record by over 10 hours, with an average speed of 35 knots - 41 mph / 66 kph - claiming the Blue Riband which she holds to this day - in both directions. Officially the ship had a maximum speed of 38 knots - which for landlubbers means 44 mph / 71 kph But the ship had a dual role. During WW2 Britain's ocean liners, RMS Queen Mary and Elizabeth, regularly crossed the Atlantic with up to 15,000 troops, alone without any escort - they travelled so fast it meant they could outrun anything, including torpedoes. Those troop movements were a key factor in the outcome of the war. This must have impressed the US government so the SS United States was commissioned in 1949 with specifications for a military role - extensive use of aluminium, four screws each powered by a high performance steam turbine, width to enable transit through the Panama Canal, and conversion in one day to a military troop ship, she could deliver 15,000 servicemen anywhere in the world in less than 10 days. Remember this was a time of fear and uncertainty and military air transport capable of moving tens of thousands of troops quickly simply did not exist. It has been claimed that this ocean liner was in fact capable of moving at 44 knots - 50 mph / 80 kph. She is the fastest object of this size ever built, and with a non-stop range of over 10,000 miles. But her military specification meant she was expensive to operate - she needed 10,000 gallons of fuel an hour - so with the arrival of fast jet transport which made her military role redundant, and rising oil costs which meant she was commercially uneconomic, she was doomed and her final voyage was in November 1969.. Sadly, since 1996 the ship has been docked at Pier 54 on the Delaware River in Philadelphia as a rusting hulk. Many plans have been proposed to preserve and renovate her for future commercial use, like the Queen Mary, but none has worked out. Unless a viable plan comes forward soon the ship will be broken up. This ship is an important artifact. I hope a new use can be found for her and that she can be saved and restored to the magnificent appearance she once had for future generations to enjoy. Hey, in Britain we go nuts about old steam railways and these days they make good money

The six passengers can enjoy swimming around in each others vomit during the six minutes of weightlessness ...

"Printing money" seems to be accepted as a more honest term - even if not literally correct - than "quantitative easing" which is typical of the mangled language that economists love I take your point that it's the BoE that does the "printing" but surely the whole purpose of QE is to free up cash to be available, and if it's not getting into the lending system what's the point? And I'm not convinced the BoE is in reality so separated from govt policy. Even Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph writes "The policy is presented as the Bank’s. Since 1997, we have learnt to believe we have an independent Bank of England. Gilt markets would take fright if they thought Britain had gone back on this. So Quantitative Easing, which sounds obscurely scatological, is passed off as an inside-the-trade matter from which we, the public, can avert our eyes. Yet QE helps entwine the Bank with the Government. Monetary policy has taken over much of the role usually assigned to fiscal policy. The Governor, reluctantly, is playing an unprecedentedly important role in how we run the country. The Chancellor is trying to keep the Bank looking independent while covertly trying to ensure that it implements his wishes. Since QE was introduced, the Bank has offered several different explanations for what it does, and the Government has tried not to talk about it. We haven’t had such an unmentionable policy since shadowing the Deutschmark in the late 1980s. Only now, pressed by the bright new MP Andrea Leadsom, has the Commons Treasury Select Committee said it will let some daylight in upon the magic." See - smoke and mirrors! A problem with the closure of so much public sector employment is we don't know what the cost savings will be, nor where the privatisation money will go - the split between new employees in the "new jobs", shareholders [foreign companies?] and the fat cats creaming off as per Ashi's comments. And so many of the "new jobs" in the private sector are around minimum wage, part time and with pitiful pensions - this impacts the economy if people in these jobs will need supplementary benefit and will need pension support because they can't afford to top up their miserable private sector pension plans. Cameron bangs on about us "all being in this together". Frankly that's a lie - we've seen executive pay continue to rocket even during this recession, while pay for ordinary folks has been slashed. This has to be addressed and corrected. As for manufacturing not being "a necessary part of the economy", I must say I have a problem with that view. Fact is manufactured things is what we spend our money on, whether it's Apple's latest iGadget, or a nuclear power station. If we're not making those things or exporting equivalent then our collective wealth is flowing out of the UK economy and into the coffers of other nations' economies. So if we're not making any of the things we buy as consumers then we have to have a highly educated workforce with high level intellectual skills to sell their brain talents to foreign buyers. That's not happened on anything like the scale needed and there's no sign of it happening anytime soon for the 30-40 million plus working age population. While we've failed to build a sufficiently educated workforce skilled in delivering high level services - and I'm not talking Call Centres - Germany has continued to develop an important manufacturing base to its economy. We all want their cars, washing machines and fridges. It's a pity Thatcher steered our economy with such singleminded determination to "services" without delivering the educational outcomes for a service economy ever to have been sustainable, and discounted - some will say undermined - the possibility of following Germany's example of making quality stuff the world wants to buy.

It's called being human. We all do it. Sometimes intentionally, often carelessly or unthinking. The important thing is learning how to say sorry and being honest about how you really feel. If you want to keep a friend that is.

I don't know how it works in the US, Ashi, but in the UK the govt prints the money and hands it over to the Bank of England. The BoE then provides this money to the big five clearing banks at - currently - the lowest interest rates we've ever seen so those banks can then lend that money to businesses, at attractively low rates - with a reasonable "turn" based on properly assessed risk. Couple of points, banks seem to have lost the skill of how to properly understand their business customers and appropriately assess their customers' individual business risk so that business can get the money they need to invest and grow the economy. Instead, what they are doing is offering extortionate rates despite historic record low rates from the BoE and not properly assessing individual risk - so businesses say "no thanks" and scrap their investment plans - or refusing to lend at all. Worse, the govt has now decided to get involved with underwriting risk to get lending kickstarted .... but ... they've decided to underwrite risk in the mortgage market not business lending. This is absolutely crazy. All it's going to do is fuel house price inflation [and maybe stimulate the building trade], saddle the taxpayer with yet more mortgage risk - as if we haven't got enough already - and produce illusory growth based on increasing property prices ... one of the causes of the mess we're now in! Meanwhile manufacturing remains the economy's Cinderella, when it should be the engine room *oops, mixing metaphors again * As for banks just lending to each other ... well that doesn't help anyone, except the banks themselves. We used to have a network of small regional banks who took deposits from their local community and lent out to their local community - but they were all gobbled up by the big banks in the 80s and 90s. Imho we need to bring back those small regional banks because they did what banking is supposed to do - and they are not too big to fail. And I agree with you on QE - this is a chicken that will surely come home to roost as inflation where the govt - the biggest borrower - wins, and the ordinary guy gets stuffed. Never mind the lessons of history re hyper inflation As for the role of govt to create jobs, a big problem as you rightly say is the huge growth in the disparity between rich and poor - fact is a good chunk of the jobs now available are around minimum wage, which is not enough to live decently or raise a family. Henry Ford understood the need to pay his workers a living wage because he wanted them to be his customers too so he would sell more cars - which meant his workers needed to earn enough to be able to afford to buy his cars. That meant everyone was a winner. But the big corporations are now run by greedy men - and it is still almost exclusively men - who believe they are entitled to gobble bigger and bigger slices of the cake for themselves, which means there is less for everyone else. They have become the modern robber barons. Podga makes a good point about microfinance but this, and "crowd funding" are probably really only viable for start ups and raising relatively small amounts of investment.

I gave up long ago taking seriously - if I ever did - the posturing by economists that they truly understand how economies work and what actions really need to be taken to deliver a healthy and sustainable economy. Because it seems to me they're charlatans, the proverbial snake oil salesmen peddling their own patent remedies under the guise of "wisdom and knowledge", when the reality is that modern economies are underpinned by smoke and mirrors - the illusion of wealth that is "money". British banknotes state “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of [the note's value]" signed by the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England. But these are just promisory notes, and the promise is worthless. Right at the centre are the shareholder owned banks - the middle men given control of all this worthless money that the government prints but which drives the smoke machines and the rotating mirrors. The claim is that banks lend to business, that generates wealth, and we all get richer as a result. But they're not doing this. Despite the astonishingly low rates of interest we have apparently had now for more than five years, banks are not lending to business, or if they are it is on such unfavourable terms - personal guarantees by business owners against their own property, or at usurious rates of interest, or both - as to be unacceptable and therefore irrelevant. So what is the point of banks if they're not lending to business? They dumped business banking years ago, and kicked out traditional "bank managers" who knew and understood their local businesses and had authority to lend to them, in favour of the low hanging fruit of mortgage lending and the easy pickings of speculating depositors money in the casino banking frenzy that enabled those at the controls of the banks to "enrich themselves beyond avarice". Problem is the banks now don't know what to do. They're been compelled to "de-risk" their activities which means holding more capital, and they lost the skills of business banking when they kicked out their highly knowledgeable business bankers. Figures released today show the UK economy grew by 0.3% over the last quarter. That's pathetic. And the reality is that "growth" occurred in the service sector while manufacturing continued to shrink. Surely if the government creates the money by just printing it they should now cut out the middle man - the banks - and start lending directly to business to get the economy moving. Or at the very least create a state owned Business Bank to challenge and compete with the private banks, to provide an alternative to the current system so that businesses can get the money they need. Because the current banking system is by any measure discredited, broken and not fit for purpose. But, hey, what do I know - I'm not an economist

A German concentration camp for Jews? If you want to write a true life horror story then fine. But as a setting for an entertaining read? Or an erotic read? Sorry, I can't see this being respectful, tasteful, credible or appropriate.

One Mile Away This article a few weeks ago in the Daily Telegraph about two black gang leaders in Birmingham realising the stupidity of it all, coming to terms with each other and then becoming mentors for young black guys - all thanks to a courageous documentary film maker, Penny Woolcock, whose film One Mile Away [just released] charts what happens after the two rival gang members – Matthias 'Shabba’ Thompson, 33, from the Johnsons and Dylan Duffus, 31, from the Burger Bar Boys – take the decision to call a truce and campaign for peace. It really uplifted my spirits when I read it. Maybe it will last, maybe it won't. But if two hardened gang enemies can call a truce then so can others. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/9918593/One-Mile-Away-Birmingham-gangs-give-peace-a-chance.html

Thanks iSimba

Good advice. The other concern is just how secure are smart phones - there's a whole security industry out there feeding off PC and laptop users. What about viruses, worms, spyware and all the other crap - are phones at risk and, if so, what should be done?

In June it will be the 25th anniversary of the death of Vietnam veteran, Leonard Matlovich. A leading campaigner for gay rights, he became a cause célèbre and was the first openly gay person to be on the cover of Time magazine. He had an exemplary military record, was seriously wounded and was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. Whilst in the military he became a campaigner against racism and came to believe strongly that discrimination against gays was similarly wrong. He also bravely chose to make a stand for gay rights by outing himself to his military commander. According to the Wiki entry: "At that time, the Air Force had a fairly ill-defined exception clause that could allow gays to continue to serve if there were extenuating circumstances. These circumstances might include being immature or drunk, exemplary service, or a one-time experimentation (known sarcastically as the "Queen for a day" rule). During his September 1975 administrative discharge hearing, an Air Force attorney asked him if he would sign a document pledging to "never practice homosexuality again" in exchange for being allowed to remain in the Air Force. Matlovich refused. Despite his exemplary military record, tours of duty in Vietnam, and high performance evaluations, the panel ruled Matlovich unfit for service and he was recommended for a General, or Less than Honorable, discharge. The base commander, Alton J. Thogersen, citing his service record, recommended that it be upgraded to Honorable. The Secretary of the Air Force agreed, confirming Matlovich's discharge in October 1975. He sued for reinstatement, but the legal process was a long one, with the case moving back and forth between United States District and Circuit Courts. When, by September 1980, the Air Force had failed to provide US District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell an explanation of why Matlovich did not meet their criteria for exception (which by then had been eliminated but still could have applied to him), Gesell ordered him reinstated into the Air Force and promoted. The Air Force offered Matlovich a financial settlement instead, and convinced they would find some other reason to discharge him if he reentered the service, or the conservative US Supreme Court would rule against him should the Air Force appeal, Matlovich accepted" Later he involved himself in various gay rights causes and the fight for adequate HIV/AIDS education and treatment. In 1986 he himself was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and continued to campaign on behalf of HIV/AIDS sufferers, including being arrested in 1987 at a protest demonstration in front of the White House for what he considered was an inadequate response by the Reagan administration to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. His last public speech in 1988 included these lines "...And I want you to look at the flag, our rainbow flag, and I want you to look at it with pride in your heart, because we too have a dream. And what is our dream? Ours is more than an American dream. It's a universal dream. Because in South Africa, we're black and white, and in Northern Ireland, we're Protestant and Catholic, and in Israel we're Jew and Muslim. And our mission is to reach out and teach people to love, and not to hate. And you know the reality of the situation is that before we as an individual meet, the only thing we have in common is our sexuality. And in the AIDS crisis - and I have AIDS - and in the AIDS crisis, if there is any one word that describes our community's reaction to AIDS, that word is love, love, love." His tombstone, which does not bear his name, is intended as a memorial to all gay veterans. Later, gay activists built on his work to protest against the US military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy - which has since been scrapped. A life well lived. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Matlovich

Hmm, maybe the fact that Detroit kept building crap gas guzzling cars that nobody wanted because the corporate management was shockingly lazy and lacking in vision and just assumed things would continue as they always had done and so they needn't bother their tiny heads about those funny foreigners making their silly little cars because Detroit is and always will be best - "because it's American stoopid!" - therefore Americans will just keep on buying the Detroit product. A crying shame those fat complacent incompetent jerks didn't have one tenth of the vision of Henry Ford. Or maybe you should finger the business schools who failed to equip them with the one basic lesson even a barrow boy understands - the customer is always right!

Gloster Meteor An old British jet fighter flew again today. Well almost - thanks to a lift from a Chinook helicopter, it was flown to a new home at an aviation museum where it will be displayed. The Gloster Meteor is interesting because it was the only Allied jet fighter in WW2, in operational service with the Royal Air Force 616 Squadron from 1944: The plane suffered from some "friendly fire" incidents because its shape was very similar to the German Me 262, so in 1945 European based Meteors were painted white to prevent this At the end of 1945 the plane broke the world air speed record at 606 mph. It continued in service with some air forces until 1970.

Sorry I'm late to the party - been offline since Friday. For me it's all about "good writing". And the test of good writing is engagement and readability. I don't want technique shoved in my face - a triumph of style over substance. So for me experimentation is a turn off if the author is trying to be tricksy. It's a distraction from the action I've found that with the best writers I am simply not aware of the technique, skill, time and effort that has gone in to producing perfect prose because I'm too busy enjoying it. It's like a clean and tidy room - you don't notice the absence of dirt and chaos, you don't think about all the work done, you just enjoy the pleasant ambience. BUT - aaarrgh - I hate multiple POVs where the same scenes are replayed, even repeating the same lines. Tinnean is a repeat offender - clunky, pointless and irritating. As for "voice" I tend to look for first person narrative because I like the immediacy, seeing the world through another pair of eyes and the intimacy of plugging directly into someone else's emotions and self. But if it's a comic story then I think third person is best because much of the fun often comes from the multiple viewpoints. Would Catcher In The Rye have been such a phenomenon in third person? That book has captured generations of teenagers - and there's no sign of that stopping - who have related to it so personally not only because it is so well written but also, I think, because the first person narrative engages so directly with the reader. But you're right - unless you can identify with and like a first person character's voice, and not get tired of them, it won't work. You could also poll "tenses" which podga mentioned. Generally I hate and avoid present tense, especially when the story is "locked" into the present tense throughout like a car stuck in first gear. However, I have read a few stories where present tense is done brilliantly because the writer knew when to switch between present and past tenses. A good example is podga's own writing, smoothly transitioning between present and past tenses like a well oiled machine ... To sum up then, for me it all comes down to the quality of the writing, then the appeal of the characters, and finally the subject matter. A brilliant writer can make me want to read about people, places and events I would normally have no interest in, from any POV and in any tense. I bet that's been no help at all Great blog Fishie Shame it will be lost, buried and forgotten in the blogosphere

Just substitute "costume" with "suit" in my last post

I think it's more about Hollywood always typecasting the villain as English - having the archetypal hero played by an English guy is just gonna confuse the American audience busy multitasking with shoveling the popcorn, balancing the Mega-Gulp coke and trying to figure out what the heck's going on with that limey in the tight-fitting costume ...